The Blue Titan
by Kruger v2521
Summary: Will-916 is a Spartan Model II active during major events of the Great War. His service takes him from the metropolis of Earth to the back forests of the colony Victoria.
1. Chapter 1: The Old Guard

**Arc 1: Harvest**

**The Old Guard**

"What's happening, John?" Will said as he sat next to the young, pale skinned boy next to him.

"I donno." John said, staring at Mendez, their trainer, as he took a small group of the kids into a building with no windows or anything. When the automatic door opened, all that was seen was a sterile white light and what walls.

"William-916?" The marine seemed like she came out of no where. She had on standard combat armor and held a XBR55. She stood upright and looked past the two boys.

"Yes ma'am?"

"I'm going to have to ask you to come with me." She turned sharply immediately after speaking and walked away.

Will stood, waving goodbye to John as he walked away. When the marine stopped, Will stood among a small group of the young Spartans. A hand fell on Will's left shoulder from behind. Slightly scared, Will turned sharply and looked to see his best-friend since he got to this planet, Ryan.

"Hey. You know what's going on?" Will asked curiously as he looked at the group of Spartans, reading the names of them all.

_Ryan-102, Anthony-747, Enos-012, Kelsey-018, Benjamin-125_. Those were the ones closest, but at least a dozen more were standing behind all of the others.

"No clue. I don't think we're going with anyone else, though. I think we're going to Halsey's office, actually." Ryan speculated as he tried to peer over the taller marines in front of them.

The group of at least 15 Spartans entered the room, Doctor Halsey and a man with a name-tag "Col. Oscar" stood, faces completely serious and calm.

"You have all been chosen for a special program. Though the Spartan Program itself is one large experiment, you all are the first in a line of stepping stones to special types of Spartans. Today, every Spartan will relieve conformance enhancement on an exponential scale. The Conventional Warfare Unit will be the first program with completely specialized Spartans, augmented with specific traits in mind. You all will be the best at what you are built to do. On the semi-official files, you are all dead due to complications during the augmentations. Is that clear?" Halsey said, characteristically stern in tone but soft in her eyes at the same time.

In response, every Spartan there nodded with a small smile whilst saying almost as one voice "Yes ma'am."

The augments were terrible. Will had never once been in so much pain in his entire life. It felt almost as if his entire body had been torn apart and repaired over and over again. Though he was unconscious, Will swore he died several times before waking up.

After his body recovered and Will could walk and train again, he began to take the mantle as one of the close quarter specialists. He trained every day, learning the careful science of hand-to-hand combat and close gun-play.

He will become the best they could make him. Will promised himself that much.

_Time Passes_

"Green is definitely not my color." Will said as he turned his lip up at the sight of his unfortunately colored helmet before he placed it on his head.

_MJOLNIR Mark IV Powered Assault Armor Online... Running Diagnostics...  
Energy Shielding: Online.  
HUD/Weapon Sync: Online.  
HUD Radar: Online.  
HUD: Online  
MJOLNIR Mark IV Powered Assault Armor is now 100% combat ready._

"How's it feeling big guy?" Ryan playfully smacked the back of Will's armor as he began to stretch around in it.

"I feel... Different. I don't know how, but I almost feel lighter." Will marveled over the suit as he glared at his gauntlets. He thought the finger armor looked kinda awesome.

"The Mark Four is an exoskeleton designed to take full advantage of the physical capabilities of you Spartans." Doctor Halsey said with a proud smirk on her face as she gazed upon two of her creations working together.

"Ma'am." Will and Ryan quickly saluted to the woman, relaxing their bodies as soon as she waved her hand.

"You boys be careful down there. And take good care of my armor." Doctor Halsey pointed as she walked away. No matter how stern she'd try to be, every Spartan knew that she cared for them; and in return, every Spartan cared just as much right back.

"How long until we touch down?" Will turned and asked Ryan, the smaller of the two Spartans. Not just in size, but Will was visibly bulkier than Ryan, who was fairly small a sleek.

"Twenty minutes. We should posse up. We can't win this war without our team." Ryan said cheerfully as he stepped forward, placing both hands interlocking behind his head.

"You act like we'll win the war otherwise in the simulations. Hell, even in combat with the Innies." Will laughed as he tested out the rangeof movement with his bulky shoulder pieces.

"That doesn't count. Those fights aren't even fair. These aliens though, they're where the real fight is. Let's just hope that just one Spartan can run through a whole armada." Ryan stated, not knowing how foreshadowing his statement just was.

"I don't know. The vids I've seen looked rough. saw an Shock Trooper get her arm chopped off."

"That's because they're casuals, Will. Look, we're the next step in human evolution! As long as we stick together and lean on each-other, any enemy stupid to take us on will get his arm chopped off." Ryan said, optimistically as he lightly smacked Will's helmet, whoin return slapped back.

The two walked into the armory to see the rest of their squad getting combat ready. They had run simulations together for years, mastering the art of maximum teamwork. Their squad-unique augments made them an amazing team.

Ryan was augmented and trained to be the ultimate Spartan in the special operations field, able to take on stealth missions such as sabotage and assassinations at a close range with incredible efficiency. He was also trained to be a leader, memorizing hundreds of tactics to use in almost any situation. His weapon of choice is a suppressed M7 SMG.

Will was trained and augmented in the fashion of close quarters to close mid-range combat, giving him extensive upper body strength and hand-to-hand training, as well as skill with the carbine type weapons given to him, he outclasses almost any opponent he faces. His weapon of choice is a MA5K Carbine.

Kelsey, given the unique-ness of her combat skills, acts as a mixture of CQB and mid-range combat. While she is neither as efficient in the skills such as Will or Enos in close combat or long range, she acts as a good in-between to bridge the gap. Her Weapon of Choice is dual M6S sidearms, along with an MA37 Assault Rifle.

Enos is augmented and trained to be a deadly sniper at almost any range. Given her outstanding ratings on the field and a personal rivalry to other Spartan-II's, she's become one of the best snipers in her class. Though, no one really figured out where her ferociousness came from, as she is also one of the most aggressive Spartans in the program. Her weapon of choice is the SRS-99 Sniper Rifle.

Anthony is the designated as the pure mid-range combatant, an amazing shot with the Battle Rifle he dons, he is one of the more deadly on the squad when it comes to gun-play. His weapon of choice is the XBR-55.

Lastly, Benjamin is the pure close quarters expert. With training and augments building him to be the fastest and deadliest of the group in hand-to-hand, he is also trained to be horrifically deadly at close ranges with his shotgun. His passion for violence is also something that is closely watched by his ONI supervisors. His weapon of choice is the M45 Shotgun.

With everyone armored up and weapons loaded, they all piled into the Pelican in the hangar. It was just the six of them, alone in the carrier of the air vehicle. They engaged in banter, told jokes, all in the attempt to ward off the coming sense of mortality that even Spartans had at times. It was hard, being seen as 7 foot tall tanks with no emotions or feelings. They all cared deeply for each-other. They were friends, all close and slightly battle tested. But it did not help the stereotype to wear the same armor with just their service tags on the breast.

The Air Force pilot in the front was shocked at the things the Spartans said. _There's like a bunch of teenagers shooting the shit._ she thought to herself with a slight laugh, enjoying the banter as well as she could without crashing the vehicle.

"We are touching down in T-one minute!" The pilot said with a certain sense of urgency.

"We dropping in hot?" Ryan asked.

"Negative, sir. Seems like a clear LZ." She replied.

"Okay, check your ammo, check your weapon. We're going in. You've all been briefed and you know what to do. Let's show these space-swimming bastards the reality of the human condition." Ryan said, successfully psyching his teammates up, all of them bumping their chest twice. 

* * *

The pelican shook as it touched the ground, the back of the vehicle opening with the whistle of the intense wind entering the inside. All six of the Spartans were standing and ready for the opening of the door to finish fully. When it did, Ryan and Will were the first to step out. Ryan, with his sidearm drawn in his left hand, his SMG in his right, looked around the LZ from his position. The others arched around him, checking for enemies.

"Clear."

"Clear."

"Clear."

Everyone relaxed as the evaluated their environment. In the briefing, they were told that the snow from the nuclear winter would be thick, but they were under-describing it by a long shot. They couldn't see more than a few feet from their faces.

"Target in on your HUD, people. Tony, take point. Will, cover left. Kels, cover right. The rest of you check the corners with me. Let's get to getting." Ryan ordered, a slightly hushed tone in case the enemy lurked nearby.

The moved, the marker on the HUD told them how far the objective was, but the light blue text was barely visible with the pitch white background. After at least an hour of traveling, they were at their position.

They overlooked what seemed to not only be a break in the blizzard, but a one-sided battle in the remnants of a small town. The toppled buildings served as meager cover to the Marines desperately fending off the Covenant, as the aliens were called.

One large lizard-like alien, nicknamed Elites, stepped forward, drawing what preformed like a sub-machine gun but shot bolts of plasma or something. In the other hand, it drew a sword-like weapon with a creepy glow effect as it activated.

"Enos. Sniper cover. I'll trust you on your positioning." Ryan ordered.

"Sir."

"Well, any other ideas on how we're going to tackle this one, Ryan?" Will said, slightly hushed as he crouched next to Ryan.

"Something totally badass."

The covenant tank, known as the Wraith, fired mortars from a distance at the Marines entrenched in the town. Each shot it fired seemed to almost vaporize anyone near it.

It had to go.

"Enos, five meters in front of me." Will called out the target, which was killed halfway through his sentence. Will moved up behind a smaller alien his HUD identified as a "Jackal". It's back turned to him and it's carbine up, Will grabbed it by its long, skinny neck and jerked it until the fragile bones shattered beneath his hands. The jackal was mutilated, never-mind dead.

"Unleash Hell, but keep me covered." Will whispered, hiding behind a rock for Enos to fire wildly. "Wildly" for Enos was shots to the chest at a rapid pace.

Will ran as fast as he could, attempting not to be seen. With the side of the Wraith facing him,and the vehicle only meters away from him, Will figure he had it in the bag until the thing turn around, an especially ugly Elite pointing a turret at him.

Too late to avoid the first two bolts of plasma to the chest, Will strafed left and right in huge strides before leaping onto the hood of the Wraith, wrapping his hands around the back of the Elite gunner's head and smashing it onto the dashboard of its turret. It let out a loud, low pitched cry of anger and pain before smashing its fist in retaliation of Will's attack.

Holding onto the turret for dear life, Will was unable to avoid the fist fist, but the second haymaker came, and Will jammed his arm on the inside of the Elite's, twisting it and latching on to brace his right jab. And then another right jab. And another. And another. The hits kept on coming until the elite stopped moving. Using this to draw his sidearm, Will jammed the magnum into the elite's wide open mouth and shot it's brains out.

Crawling down to what seemed like the panel of the driver, Will attempted to yank the door off with pure strength alone to no avail. Angered, he slammed his fist into it as hard as he could, denting the panel a bit. He repeated this process until the panel was weak enough to be torn off. He did so to see a bloodied elite draw its glowing sword in an attempt to take Will's leg off. It missed. Will swung his leg back to avoid the slash, and brought his foot back into the elite's hand, smashing it into the corner of the Wraith's opening, forcing the creature to drop its weapon. Will then drew his machete from his back and jammed it into the chest of the Wraith driver, killing it.

The Wraith stopped suddenly, almost throwing the freestanding Spartan off as he took in a few deep breaths, letting the adrenaline run off for a couple of seconds before re-engaging.

Unlucky for the Spartan, the Covenant was now aware of his presence and began shooting at him, a carbine shot hitting his shoulder hard before he dove down to cover behind the now empty Wraith. Will drew his MA5K, watching his radar closely a he listened to the angry elites, jackals, and grunts yell. He was unsure whether or not it was at him.

Will was scared. The elites were not simple targets. It was a ordeal to kill two stationary ones, and Will was unsure of their close quarters skills.

Will soon saw three red dots on his HUD just feet away from the Wraith. He took in a deep breath, held his weapon tightly to his chest, and stood up. In a matter of seconds, he was on top of the Wraith, jumping off of it's mortar cannon. He landed on what was called a "Grunt", killing it by his weight in a spray of lambent light-blue blood in the snow. To his right was another elite who backhanded him with its small plasma rifle. The hit was hard, and it sent Will almost reeling backwards. He turned to recover, but by then the fast elite's fist was already coming up to uppercut the young Spartan.

Rolling on his back when he landed, Will was able to recover from the blow quickly enough to defend the next attack: a kick to the face. Will swayed to the right of the kick, wrapping his arm around the elite's enormous leg. After locating the equivalent of a knee on the thing, Will decided he'd had enough of this particular fight, and drove his fist into the side of the elite's leg, shattering the knee in one mighty blow.

The elite cried out-loud as it fell, clutching its knee. Will scrambled to avoid anymore attention and jammed his standard combat knife into the elite's windpipe, silencing it instantly.

"The tank is busted, Ryan. About six or so confirmed kills." Will reported with a laugh as a grunt looked at him with a face of terror and ran towards the Wraith, away from the battle entirely.

"Awesome. Now, what do you think about a Spartan assault?" Ryan asked through the comms as he watched Will take cove behind a rock, facing away from the enemies in front of him.

"Reckless, but I like it. Keep Enos up there though, I don't wanna get arrested for War Crimes." Will said jested.

"Say something like that again, Will. I just might miss a few times next time you need covering fire. Ungrateful bitch." Enos snapped, almost yelling over the comm at Will's comment.

"Enos, stay unseen but keep some Marines alive. Silencer is you need it." Ryan tossed the posted up sniper a SRS silencer. "Everyone, stay low and regroup on Will. We're going in for the pincer hit. Tony, get a comm up with the Marines. We'll need to chat first."

"I probably should've killed that little thing." Will said to himself as he saw the outline of the fleeing grunt get smaller as it entered the blizzard. But, he soon thought nothing of it.

* * *

X'zora stumbled forward, a stray human weapon's bullet hit his shoulder, bouncing off on his shield. He turned, the defeated marines cowering in fear as his attention shifted.

The elite looked behind him in awe as he watched five armored humans move like no marine he had ever seen. These humans were worthy of his attention. As he began to walk forward, exited, he was stopped by a pathetic impact on his back.

It was a marine, hoping to stun him with the punch and stab him in the back.

The elite turned with a low growl rumbling out of his gullet. The marine stepped back, visibly regretting his decision. X'zora raised his plasma rifle and shot a few bolts into the human's face, killing it in an instant.

Continuing his march, X'zora shoved his way through cowering grunts and shocked minor elites. As he drew closer to the moving chaos that was these unnatural humans, his step became more lively, eventually becoming a full-on sprint until he found one of the humans alone.

The human brought his forearm up, clashing it on X'zora's wrist just below the base of the his energy sword.

_He is fast... But let's see if he's..._

X'zora let out an almost ecstatic laugh as he punched the human in the face of its helmet. With it stunned for just a second, the powerful elite snatched its throat.

The human punched the inside of X'zora's elbow, releasing his grib and bending his arm. This human, this... Demon, then kicked X'zora square in the chest. It then reached on its back and grabbed what looked like a curiously small human rifle.

_Fast, strong, and well trained? Is it a gift from the Gods? An opponent like this? Six of them?_

X'zora swung his energy sword as he stepped forward, slashing the weapon in half just before the demon shot it. It dropped the weapon and moved forward, seemingly annoyed and ready for battle. 

* * *

Will ducked under another swing from the exited elite, wrapping his arms onto its back under its armed arm, using this to pull the elite into his uplifted knee.

Now behind the monstrously large elite, Will brought his arm back and smashed it against the spine of the alien. It fell forward, recovering with a ridiculously inhuman roll before turning around.

"Heh heh heh." The elite turned his glowing blade off and ran forward much faster than Will ever could. It dug its fingers under Will's and, to the suprise of Will, lifted Will into the air over its head and into the snow.

When Will recovered, he looked around assessing his situation. When he began to stand, his foot snapped through the floor.

"What?" Will said confused until he brought his foot back up, seeing cold water, and a moving layer of water under the ice he was standing on.

When he looked back up, he saw just too late the elite attacking him. This elite was powerful and fast. If Will couldn't disengage, or bring this fight closer to the others, he wasn't going to get out of this without a few battle scars... _At least_...

Will fell from the blow, landing on a slightly thinner layer of ice, which cracked at the weight of his heavy armor. Will scrambled backwards, bringing the elite to laughter at the cruel acts to follow running in his mind. 

* * *

The demon reached to the back of his armor as X'zora walked menacingly slow.

_I may just let him live... Maybe the fire of revenge will make for another fight in the future... Especially if I injure him and murder his allies in front of him... The fire will burn hot._

Suddenly, the demon slammed his fist into the ground and backpedaled quickly.

"DO NOT RUN!" X'zora cried in his own tongue as he ran forward to the demon.

The ground seemed to come out to attack X'zora in a cloud of white. A loud ring came to his ears as he seemingly fell into weightlessness. He tried to take a breath, a second to regain his senses, but his lungs simply silled with water.

* * *

Will took in a deep breath. In the heat of the moment, in actual combat, his eyes rolled back like a shark and the augments and training took over. When he realized he almost died, he couldn't breath. His helmet became musty, his armor heavy, and everything became cramped.

His heart rate shot up as he looked over and saw three elites, not as large as the one he just submerged, but elites nonetheless. He couldn't think of what to do. He wasn't ready. He fell back on his behind and began shuffling away.

They got to him quickly, laughing is terrifying low chuckles as they kicked him onto his stomach. Will tried to struggle to his knees, his elbows still on the ground when another hoof sent him rolling back onto his back.

One of the elites, the obviously higher ranked one looked over at the opening in the ice, a small piece of alien technology. It picked it up, clenching the device, activating another one of those glowing swords.

Will jumped up, getting on one knee as the elite began lunging forward to slash. In a clutch moment, Will brought his machete up to deflect the blade, but it sliced through with ease, sending a long gnash across the right side of his helmet. Will looked down at his now half a foot long blade, shrugged a little on the inside and jammed it into the elite's throat, sending it writing on the floor, gargling on its own blood in the same low pitched noise that came in its laughter as it died.

The second elite let out a pained, angry growl that doubled as a roar.

_Maybe they knew each other. Maybe they were friends._ Will thought to himself as jumped back from a few hay-makers. Will soon ducked under another swing, giving the low ranked elite a hard body check, sending it to the floor. Will put his boot on its chest, drew his magnum, and shot the elite once, its brains and blood flying across the ice. He gagged in horror as he reviewed the bloodbath that was this conflict.

"Oh god..." Will said under his breath as he backed away toward his comrades.

A hand grabbed Will's arm from behind. He turned around, drawing his blood-stained magnum at Ryan's face.

"Jesus Christ man, you fucked them up good!" Ryan said with a jump of excitement as Will lowered his weapon.

"It's not funny, man." Will looked down at the purple splotches of alien blood on his chest.

"That's what they get, man. That's what happens when you decide to randomly fuck with human planets. They're trying to kill us all, Will. Guys like you and me do this to prevent that." Ryan said, optimistically as he pointed to the two dead elites.

"But don't you think they feel. We're destroying what we don't understand!" Will grabbed Ryan's collar and shook him violently.

"For the first time in human history, we are NOT the bad guys here! THEY are destroying us for no reason! Entire cities nuked in hours! Millions killed! Why do you think there's a nuclear winter on the bread-basket planet? Did you look at Harvest from orbit? Did you see Enos' face? She was born here, man! Look what these bastards did to that town!" Ryan pointed Will's head toward the battle, toward the town without roofs. Toward a pair of jackals dragging a marine away. Toward an elite laughing as he choked another soldier out.

"Holy shit! What's happening to me, Ryan?" Will fell to his knees and looked down at his hands.

Ryan crouched down to his friend's level, trying to think of something to say that could fix it. Something to convey a reason to make him feel better. But he could only think of a few words.

"You're fighting in a war that depends on us to win, cause we'll be extinct if we don't."

Will looked over to Ryan, and before he could say something, Kelsey came at them, flying through the air. She tumbled in the snow only a few feet away from them.

"KELS!" Ryan called as he ran over, sliding to her side.

"Ow, ow, ow. I'm fine." Kelsey said as she stretched her shoulders as she stood up.

"What the hell could through a Spartan?" Will asked, almost forgetting the past few minutes.

Kelsey pointed towards the town. "That."

Benjamin rolled just in time, narrowly saving his life from the incredible power the hammer the giant monkey held. It roared, noticeably larger than the elites they'd been fighting so far.

"Enos! On me!" Benjamin said on the comm loudly as the laughing ape marched forward.

There was a crack, a high-pitched whining noise, and then the ape staggered. When it recovered, it let out a horrifying roar, and others just like it, but slightly smaller, came running into the town, tearing through (literally) every human they saw, and even a couple of grunts. One went to run past the larger one when it stopped it. Its glare right on Benjamin, it grabbed the large gun from the smaller one's back and fired it to its right into the mountains as it licked the red-purple blood trickling down it's helmet. All Ben heard was a cry of pain from Enos, then only static.

"No. Enos? Enos!" Benjamin called desperately as the large ape hit him with a heavy uppercut, Benjamin flew a couple feet back.

"What the hell are those things Ben?" Will asked, coming right up behind him.

"I called in command. They called them a couple things. Pick your favorite: Bravo Kilos, Baby Kongs, Apes, Maneaters, Brutes." Benjamin said as she slowly stood up with Ryan and Will's help.

"Brutes, eh? That'll be fun." Ryan said as he drew his magnum and SMG. Audrey held her arm out to stop him from proceeding.

"Command, this is Spartan-125. Mission is a no-go. The held up marines were flanked while we were engaged. Orders?" Ben glared at Will and his blood covered armor.

"Yes sir. Yes. Copy. Over and out." Ryan jumped when the comm linked to him, the leader of Delta Squad, their team.

"Okay, Fall back. Tony, recover Enos, the rest of you are on me. We need to secure a LZ for pickup." Ryan said, to his own distaste as he and his Spartan began to retreat.

Ben looked back at the brute, obviously their leader, who chuckled and crossed his arms. 

* * *

"Should we chase after them, sir?" The brute minor asked, almost afraid.

"No." The chieftain said with a low, rumbled, scratchy voice. "Let them flee. I a sure you we will see them again." He said before walking away to pick first dibs on the survivors his soldiers had picked up.

He'd gone all day without warm meat.


	2. Chapter 2: Ruin

**Ruin**

Will's boot touched down on the ground, his left before his right. Using this, he immediately began running as a plasma bolt grazed the side of his shoulder, denting his shields slightly. He slid into cover, popping his head up to return fire with his MA5K Carbine, tearing through a small huddle of jackals who weren't covered by their shields.

When he ducked back behind cover, hundreds of bolts flying over him, he looked over back a the pelican he had just exited, the rest of his squad pouring out. Benjamin ran right next to him and as fast as a Spartan could be, he slid over the concrete slab of cover and rolled behind another set.

As the Spartans pushed forward, they moved deeper and deeper into a long abandoned, snowed out, destroyed city that the covenant seemed to take a liking to. As they were, all six of them were almost completely pinned down on a highway overpass. Ryan sprinted across the kill-zone, his shielding taking a few hits and almost breaking. He stopped to regain his shields next to Will, who was second farthest up.

"Everybody move up! Will, on me." He patted Will's shoulder as he stood up, still staying a bit low.

Will watched as the smaller Spartan fearlessly hurtled over the railing and landed on the freeway below. Not long after that, when the enemy fire died down a little, Will followed suit, landing with ease.

"They see us?" Will asked, looking up as the cracked concrete and the sketchy creaking steel beams.

"Oh yeah. Let's just hope I'm as good as I think I am." Ryan smiled as he crept forward.

This was what Ryan did. He was smaller, but still exponentially faster, smarter, and stronger than a normal marine. He had the quickest mind of any Spartan Will had ever met. Told to keep him covered, Will watched the area around Ryan as he crept up on the held up enemies. He stood still for a while, investigating the area around him before taking every step. He stayed at the pace, Will crouching as low as he could a few feet away. When Will turned around to check on Ryan, he was gone.

Will ran up the dirt hill to the edge of the overpass as watched as Ryan rinsed an elite from behind, the loud and constant firefighting covering the sounds of screams and fire as sounds coming from the front.

Ryan jammed his knife into an elite's windpipe, ripping it out and throwing it into a grunt who saw the action. With several of the rear forces dead, Ryan gave Will the go-ahead to support him, the two soon running through the surprised covenant forces.

Within minutes, between the flanking forces and the advancing forces, the remnants of the covenant squads were slaughtered.

"Regroup!" Ryan yelled, pointing his index finger in the air and spinning his arm in a circle. "Okay. These marines we are looking for found something big, something they were too afraid to talk about over the comms. They are hurt, hungry, and pinned down somewhere near the city center's mall. We're going to split up into three teams of two. Enos, Tony, you guys run the rooftops, see what you can see. Ben, Will, you two run the buildings above street level to do the same. Kelsey and I will take the streets. Signal over comms if you make contact, enemy or friendly. If we lose our signals, green flares for the VP's, red flares for requested combat support. We clear?" Ryan ordered, a standard order he gave, but one that was nice to hear once in a while.

"Sir!" They all grunted at once, splitting off into their different areas.

* * *

Anthony held out his hand, completing the climb before Enos, who swatted it away before pulling herself up.

"You know, Enos, you could always be nicer." Anthony laugh a bit to himself as Enos strutted in front of him, walking pridefully as she always did.

"I'll let you know when you do something that warrants my kindness." Enos was a very cruel, mean, outspoken women. She was always seen as the most brutal combatant because of her ferocity in a fight, which was matched only by her skill with her rifle. Unlike the supervisors and Spartans who see her as this person, almost everyone on Delta has seen the good side of her, which was in fact a rare sight to behold.

"Right. How high you plan on going?" Anthony said as he watched Enos lead a few feet to another rooftop. He soon followed suit.

"See that building, right there? That's gonna be my nest." Enos pointed to half of a skyscraper, the jagged edges at the top suggest it toppled.

"I'll mark it on the HUD, I guess." Anthony walked along, trying to keep up with the fast paced woman before him.

"Holy-" Enos said seconds before jumping off the edge of the three story building they were on. Anthony saw this in the corner of his eye at the last second.

"Whoa, hey!" He raced after her, dropping down with haste. He landed with his eyes looking at the ground beneath his feet. When he gazed up, they were in a standard low-income housing courtyard. A cheaply made fountain in the middle that obviously never worked. Empty spaces for barbecues to be placed and had, and trash everywhere. Enos stood in awe.

"What is it? See something?" Anthony was still in combat mode, his hand ready to grab his M6. Soon he realized that she was from Harvest, and she was one of the older kids who showed up.

"This can't be..." Enos ran up the set of concrete stairs, small rocks embedded into it to make it look slightly elegant. She crashed through a door, and that was all Anthony saw before he heard the most worrying sound of them all:

Silence.

Anthony ran up after her, entering the dark room. There was a television on its side, the glass shattered.

There was a dead grunt laid out on the floor by the door, a rotting human corpse in the fettle position on the stain, nasty couch.

Enos continued forward, turning to her immediate left into a small kitchen where another dead grunt laid dead. She came back toward Anthony and took a left straight down the hall. To her left was a bathroom. At the end of the hall and to the right was the master bed.

At the very back was a closed door with the name "Enos" painted in pink on the light blue door.

"You okay?" Anthony came up behind his comrade with a hushed voice.

"I thought I recognized where we were." Enos said quietly before taking off her helmet, turning up her nose at the awful smell.

Enos opened the door to see it was almost untouched by time. Just how her memories made it seem. A fuzzy light shining in from the windows, a bed with a skirt at the bottom, and horse print all over the blanket. The bed was still made, the pillows covered by the blanket and not one wrinkle was even remotely visible, even to her augmented sight. There were dolls and stuffed horses lining the walls and a pink rug in the middle to tie it all up. She looked down, and a dog stood there, looking her right at her.

"Hey, E.." Anthony said with some urgency as Enos took a step forward, mirroring the dog.

"ENOS!" Anthony yanked Enos backwards by a groove in her armor as a covenant drone lashed at her. Anthony threw her back and shot it with all eight of the bullets in his clip.

"What the hell was that?" Anthony said to Enos to no avail. She was in shock at her room when she looked back into.

Dirt everywhere, a shattered window, blood lining the walls and torn up toys and stuffed horses were on the floor. Her bed was rotted with a corpse of a dead drone. Long dead.

"I- I don't know." Enos said, looking up at Anthony, who probably saved her life.

Anthony looked down at her, a face full of fear and ruin. Fair-length black hair reflecting the sun with it's pure color. A pale white face and cold, green eyes and a new, still red scar from the brute only days ago across her forehead. This was the first time he had seen her actual face, in the years of training with her mask of anger and rage. It was sobering. Anthony knelt down to her level and removed his helmet as well, revealing his short and slightly spiky light brown hair and his brown-black eyes.

He smiled and snickered a little bit and pointed to the door.

"It says "Lana". Not even close."

* * *

"How we looking?" Ryan asked Kelsey with a slightly hushed voice as he aimed his SMG up and down the right side, Kelsey doing the same on the left.

"Looks clear." Kelsey relaxed her body, eyes peering at the bottom left corner of herHUD every few seconds as she crept along.

"How's it going?" Ryan said, almost out of nowhere.

"What?" Kelsey asked, caught by surprise.

"What!? I'm just asking. Don't act like I'm trying to get under your chest-plate. How are you doing, Kels?" Ryan laughed, his voice still hushed to the point where he was just under normal speech.

"Shut-up. I' fine. Why?"

"Had a weird experience with Will. He freaked out during the charge when he killed some elites. I just wanted to make sure no one else was feeling the same, ya'know?" Ryan shrugged, struggling to explain his reasoning for a seemingly simple question.

"That why you wanted to get me _alone_?" Kelsey chuckled, shaking her head at Ryan.

"Funny. Enos is dead emotionally or something, Anthony is so level headed he could never be shook, Benjamin is a psycho and loves combat, always has. You're the only one who I not only don't know well, but seems somewhere else." Ryan explained, stopping the forward advance down the street, attempting to scratch his head through his helmet.

"Right. They just kind of don't strike me as the kind to show remorse in return of remorse." Kelsey said plainly before continuing onward.

"Yeah, I think the same thing. I just don't know what to do about Will." Ryan said grimly, obviously worried.

"My advice, give him time. Dude's legendary in a fight. He'll get over-" Her sentence was stopped by the sudden wave of her arm grabbing and cocking her weapon. Kelsey aimed it up in an alley to their left.

There was no movement.

"What was-" Ryan was shushed by Kelsey as she gazed down the alley.

There was a crash of what sounded like trash cans. With that, Ryan was convinced and readied his SMG.

In a sudden burst of dark green and yellow, what seemed like hundreds of drones came down the long alleyway like a hoard of locust. The dead fell to the floor as the hoard rose higher above the piling dead getting ever closer to the duo.

"We should go." Ryan suggested, forgetting he was a leader for a second. Kelsey reloaded her weapon as she prepared to fire once more. "KELSEY!"

Ryan leaped over to her and kicked her aside just as the swarm smashed the Spartan against the and continued to pile on him. Ryan couldn't move, and the pressure on his chest, which also kept him pinned up against the wall, kept him from breathing. He opened his tight shut eyes to see hundreds of arms pulling and scratching at him. He tried to yell, but couldn't. Which was fine, cause Kelsey was going to save him. At least, she'd try.

Kelsey unloaded three clips into the pile to almost no effect. Remembering the minimal damage it did to Spartan armor, and praying that Ryan's shields were still up, she chucked a grenade into the cluster, and it slowly slid into the center of the hoard and exploded, separating them and sending drones everywhere.

Kelsey sprinted through them, smashing skulls and kicking bugs away as she made her way to Ryan who sat limp against the wall. She tried pushing forward, but the swarm regrouped on her, arms and claws clutching at her body and, before she knew it, she was in the air and flying away, screaming as loud as she could.

Ryan shot back up at the high pitched shriek as he looked up to see Kelsey being pulled away.

"NO! KELSEY!" He ran after the swarm, ducking and weaving between alleys and cars and dumpsters at full sprint as fast as he could for what seemed like hours until he saw the swarm enter what seemed to be a half toppled skyscraper.

* * *

The two Spartans walked along-side each other through the string of linked apartments, no words spoken between them.

Will had never considered Benjamin his friend, and he was sure the feeling was mutual. Ben was over aggressive. He grows to hate every enemy he faces, even in simulation. His drive is the lust for violence, death, and war. He probably wanted this war to go on for a while,and Will was seriously worried he'd get his way.

"What?" Ben said sternly, stopping in the midst of a doorway between two apartments. "What are you starring at?"

"Sorry, spacing out." Will said, suddenly noticing he was in fact staring as he pondered. Ben must have been able to feel it.

"Another question. What the hell is your problem? I heard about your little breakdown. And I think you cost human lives freaking out about alien ones." Ben turn around full and stepped closer to Will, who became defensive.

"I have the right to freak out if I want to. And it wasn't _my_ fault. Those apes came from nowhere." Will took a step forward. This was going nowhere good really fast.

"Hm." Ben grunted, a smile under his helmet just before throwing a right hook. Will was able to block the first, clutching Ben's arm, but the left came too quickly.

Will stepped back from the blow, recovering too late to evade a solid kick to the midsection. He rolled backwards to his feet, standing up and putting his hands out.

"What the hell is your problem?!" Will exclaimed, now a good distance away from Ben.

"I don't fucking trust you. You'll do something to bitch out of this fight. This war. Whether I like it or not, we need you, but you're too soft to fight it out 'til the end! So I got a few options here." Ben said before he charged forward, tackling Will into a wall. Will sent his elbow down on Ben's spine, sending him to the floor as Will moved into the small kitchen.

"Either I beat some commitment into you..." Ben said as he pulled out his shotgun, "... Or I get rid of you know before it's really tragic. Your choice."

Will stood there for a minute and realized the bad spot he was in. Ben was much more skilled in close combat, which gave him an advantage even if Will was much stronger. Will quickly grabbed and chucked three pans at Ben's shotgun, which took enough of the rounds to minimize the damage of the blast done to Will. He charged forward, smacking Ben's gun aside and hammered him as hard as he could; knocking Ben through the drywall.

"God damn ass-" Ben stopped as he looked up to see a boot on his chest and a knife at his throat. Will had won this engagement.

"Tell you what. I'll forget this happened, stay in the military till I die or we win the war, IF you cut this shit out. As much of an asshole you are, you're good. Pull shit like this again, you'll find yourself on the wrong end of a firing squad." Will moved the knife back slowly, allowing Ben to get up a little before he palmed his face and jammed his knife into Ben's chest and dragged it down slowly. The knife went in shallow, because Will intended it so, and the cut was about half a foot on Ben's breastplate. Then Will actually let him up.

Will offered out his hand, and with an annoyed grunt, Ben clutched it and used Will to stand up quickly. Just then, the glass from the window just next to them shattered, hundreds of drones flying past, and suddenly Ryan's tag on their HUD whizzing past them.

Just then, Will knew something was wrong, especially when he saw Kelsey sprinting in the streets below after them.

"KELS! What happened?" Will exclaimed out the shattered window.

"They got Ryan!" She yelled quickly, running past as fast as she could.

"Guess where we're going now?" Ben said, suddenly with a chipper tone and a skip to his step as he ran through the apartments. Will followed.

Half an hour of running later, the three made it to the base of the toppled sky scrapper. It seemed unstable, and they could see a lot of drones sticking their heads out.

_"What the shit are you guys doing there?"_ Enos said over comms while looking down at the three with her scope.

"The bugs jacked Ryan. We gotta get him back." Kelsey said, one hand at the side of her helmet.

_"Sounds fun. Mind if we join?"_ Tony said with a slight laugh as he joined Enos at her position.

"Someone's gotta go for the objective. Who knows what those marines are like right now." Will commented, aiming his gun at the building around them, watching their six.

_Tony and I-'ll go and find the guys. You all need to get our big, bold, kidnapped leader. Later kiddies."_ Enos said as she shot a silenced round from Tony's rifle right between Will's spread legs. After it whizzed past, he moved around, slamming his legs together and yelling.

"NOT COOL! Let's just go in!" Will charged inside with a middle finger aimed at Enos' general direction.

There was an uncomfortable amount of silence between them entering and what Anthony and Enos heard next. But first, they moved towards the general area the marines would be in, leaping from rooftop to rooftop. Anthony stopped in front of Enos suddenly.

"... I- I'm patching you through."

_"Shit. Shit! __**ShitshitshitSHITSHITSHITSHIT!**__"_

_"Kelsey! Will! Behind you!"_

_"BEN! What the hell is happening? Agh!"_

After that, just radio static. Enos shuffled and clutched the back of her head.

"We gotta keep moving Tone." She said, not liking the sentence coming from her mouth. Anthony was in the same boat.

"... Yeah..." He said, almost in a hushed voice as he turned back towards the objective, his head leaned forward a little bit.

Enos couldn't help but turn back towards the toppled skyscraper where she left her team. Her , she may not ever see them all again.


	3. Chapter 3: Urban

[b]Urban[/b]

"Cover me." Will ordered, now in command of his small three-man squad searching for their team leader. He ran down the hallway, looking through every door as he went through to the end, signally all clear. They knew the brunt of the drone swarm would be in the upper levels, but stragglers could still prove dangerous in small groups, able to tear through even a Spartan's shields in a second with a few rapid fired plasma pistols.

The Spartans behind Will followed him down the hallway at the base of the stairs at the end. Will looked up, nodded, and sent Ben on point, a shotgun in situations that may happen soon may be useful. Some time of walking up a long flight of stairs, Ben stopped, motioning Will to do so as well behind him.

"I got a blip. Ryan's on this level." Ben looked back for approval of his current leader. Despite Ben's obvious distaste for Will, he had to respect his rank in the situation they were currently in. He wanted Ryan back as much as the next guy, if not more.

"Go. Kelsey, open a com link with Enos and tell her we've found Ryan." Will nodded, ready for a fight on the other side of the door.

He was right.

Ben opened the door slightly just before it shot open, shooting the Spartan back and through the railing of the stairs, his pure weight too much for the weaker metal bars to handle. He was able, however, to grab a hold of the concrete floor above him.

"Shit. Shit!" Ben reacted at first, until he looked up at the cracking old concrete loosing hold. "ShitshitshitSHITSHITSHITSHIT!"

Three drones came soaring out of the door as Ben fell, Will and Kelsey able to gun them down before any real damage was done. Instinctively, Kelsey went to help Ben up, no one able to survive that fall straight down the middle of the stairs. Will joined her.

"Kelsey! Will! Behind you!" He yelled as he swung his legs and let go of the two's hands, landing on the stair level directly below them.

The two turned to see the huge mass of a large swarm. Both tried to leap out of the way, the swarm working as almost an arm that picked Kelsey up and yanked her into the door.

"Ben! What the hell is happening? Agh!" Will said as the swarm shot out at dragged him across the floor as well.

Knowing well what would happen if he went that way, Ben stayed out sight for a few minutes until the waves of shrieks and buzzing wings stopped.

He was all alone.

* * *

"We have a mission. They're Spartans, they can handle themselves." Anthony said as he grasped Enos' arm before she walked away. She simply turned at looked at the Spartan, cocking her head to the side a little bit.

"We're going." Enos said forcefully taking a hard-booted step forward.

"Stop that." Anthony said, taking a half step back as she took a step forward, her head seemingly unmoving. It was horrifying, Anthony could swear he could hear her rage in the dead silence.

"We. Are. Going." She quickly cocked her head to the other side stood on the tips of her boot to appear bigger to the taller Spartan.

"Please stop... Enos... C'mon..." Anthony begged as he took another step back. Enos grabbed his arm and slowly pulled him towards her, her hands somehow causing a demonic burning feeling in Anthony's arm through the thick titanium gauntlet.

"We're going." Enos said with a smile as she released Anthony's arm and began walking, knowing she'd won.

"Yes ma'am." Anthony said, forgetting he outranked Enos.

But of course he was outclassed.

* * *

Kelsey violently swung her fists, hitting something every time she punched; killing more than a few drones. She felt the overall grip of the swarm loosen, so she began kicking and flailing violently until she eventually fell to the floor five feet below. She drew her primary and sidearm weapons and began shooting in all directions, but they kept coming.

_What now?_ Kelsey thought to herself, going through every battle play they had ever learned in her head. Then she saw an old propane tank and remembered she had incendiary rounds, so she went with that instead.

She loaded the red colored magazine into her magnum and fired with no result other than a knocked over empty fuel tank.

"Shit." She cursed to herself as she ran to the door to the next room; the slightly scared thrall keeping their distance for now.

Kelsey closed the wooden door behind her, knowing full and well that it wouldn't last. Taking the few minutes she had, Kelsey observed her environment. Unfinished wooden rooms, support beams and unfilled window spaces that revealed the outside. This place was under construction when the Covenant attacked.

Kelsey looked through the holes in the wall meant for windows to see most of the city and the top of the skyscraper she was in, top down in side of a smaller, but still pretty tall building. It was a sort of unstable, undesirable bridge. If they could just three levels down, Kelsey and the rest of her team might be able to escape.

There was a bang on the door, which was quickly followed by another, and another, and another until it became an almost constant banging noise. The drones wanted in.

Kelsey ran over to the door to reinforce it. With her shoulder blocking the door, the drone's became more desperate to get in, a thin arm smashing through an already cracked part of the door. Kelsey swatted the arm, snapping in.

With a second to spare before they started chewing through the door or something, Kelsey checked her inventory via her HUD; low ammo, a few grenades, that's it.

Kelsey sighed loudly as she reached for her belt and took a step back from the door.

"Fuck it." She pulled the pin, banged it on her breastplate, and tossed the grenade through the small hole in the door. With that, she proceeded to take more than a few steps back.

The explosion was a lot bigger than it should have been, in the aftermath of the explosion there was fire and multiple rooms were destroyed. The. Kelsey noticed a large amount of shattered metal, probably propane or something else explosive.

Kelsey had only just began traversing the wreckage when she heard Will's voice grunting loudly, probably in pain.

"Will!?" Kelsey ran towards the voice to see Will under a large metal beam that had fallen in the explosion.

"Did you do this?!" Will said, obviously a bit panicked.

"... Maybe."

"What the hell is- you realize explosions kill INDISCRIMINATELY!?" Will shifted from shock to anger. He let out a loud grunt as he rolled the large beam off of himself.

"You okay?" Kelsey asked, trying her hardest to not to laugh.

Will wiped the new layer of grit, grime and soot off of his armor and marched out of the explosion wreck.

"Wait, are you really mad at me?" Kelsey said, honestly worried.

"... No... It was kind of awesome." Will said as he exited the door in front of them, Will's next comment interrupted by the sounds of deep, rumbled voices that sounded very inhuman as they spoke English.

"What was that?" One voice said cautiously.

"We have to hurry. The demons must be nearby." Another voice replied.

"One last time; how many planets do you humans inhabit!?"

Will peaked in to see Ryan, helmet removed, get smacked across the face by an elite. He did not speak, but smiled as a small glint appeared in the darkness behind the two elites.

Benjamin attacked with furious speed and power, blasting the back of one of the Elite's head immediately. The second turned quickly to strike Ben with a heavy back hand. Ben recovered, lifting up his shotgun and firing just after the elite kicked it from pointing towards it and tackled Benjamin into the wall.

Head and neck at Benjamin's torso, the elite wasn't able to see the blade as the Spartan jammed it into its neck and twisting the large blade, killing it quickly.

Benjamin, victorious, let out a relieved sigh and limped his arms to his sides. "You heard them speak English, right?" He said, slightly panicked.

"Yeah." Ryan replied as Benjamin removed his binds.

"That was a bit much for two elites, Ben." Kelsey condescended as she entered the room, Will following after.

"Well, they were tough. You guys make that explosion?" Benjamin pointed at Will and Kelsey, Will pointing at Kelsey exclusively.

"Whatever. Let's just contact Enos and get our mission done. We need a good winafter that shit we pulled last time. One me, let's move out." Ryan said, arming himself up and leading the way out.

* * *

_"Enos, come in. We've recovered Ryan and we're en-route to your position. Have you found the Marine's hold up?"_ Benjamin asked formally over the comms as he and the rest of his team exited the toppled skyscraper.

Enos slowed her roll, having been running on the roof-tops to go and support her team. Anthony was there too.

"No. We were on our way to help you guys out. What happened?" Enos asked, now completely still as Anthony finally caught up.

_"We'll have story time as soon as we're on the Pelican heading home. What's your ETA to the city center mall?"_ Ryan asked, a sense of urgency in his voice.

"I'd say 5 minutes if we book it." Anthony replied for Enos, looking at his city layout on his HUD. He played with his TAC-Pad as he spoke, looking for the other's position.

_"We'll meet you there."_ Ryan said, ending the communication line as he turned to Benjamin, Will, and Kelsey.

"Do you think the rest of the Covenant knows English? That can be a pretty big problem." Kelsey stepped towards Ryan, pointing back at the tower where they found the news.

"Yeah, they can actually use our intel now, all while we can't." Will added, looking at the floor. The UNSC had to know this as soon as possible.

"It's probably what the marines found. But we'll never know if we just sit here. We have to go save them." Ryan turned to walk before stopping to add something. "Just because they all know doesn't mean we shouldn't try to keep all of them alive, by the way."

* * *

"In position." Enos said, in a large building just to the west of the mall, where there were Covenant surrounding the site, artillery and air support seemingly on the way. There was a UNSC banner outside the mall. Though torn, it served as a useful judge of the direction and power of the wind, which was blowing into Enos' back.

Anthony was behind Enos, spotting her and watching her back. They were positioned at the bottom of a hole blown into the side of the building, making a small crawlspace for them under some half destroyed stairs and on top of a metal support/pseudo-floor they laid on. They were probably clear.

Each Spartan on their own counted as a walking combat situation, able to take out several covenant at once, to a degree. Elites and brutes were then exception. Even Will and Benjamin, the team's resident close quarter fighters could be overwhelmed by three or more of them, so they had to be careful.

"How many do you see from your position, hawk-eye?" Ryan asked, crouched behind a dumpster down a small alleyway just across the street, north of the mall. It was surprisingly sketchy for it proximity to a large, expensive, high-classed mall. But Ryan thought nothing of that.

Enos as silent for a few seconds, obviously counting.

"I meant an estimate, Enos." Ryan said with a sigh.

"West and north sides are surrounded. I'd say around thirty. Two wraiths en route from the east side. Three snipers above your position, boss, and one above Will's." Enos scoped around with her high powered rifle.

Will was located just east of the mall, Kelsey to the west with Enos at her back.

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure I got the weak end over here, Ryan. I seen a dozen, tops. South end looks pretty clear too. Ben and I could take them pretty easy, but it wouldn't be quiet." Will said, looking over at Benjamin, who was located to the south of the mall, inside an apartment building at street level.

"Alright, Enos, cover us as best you can. Ben, Will, you guys willing to take the heat on your backs?"

"Yes sir." Benjamin answered.

"You two make the first move. Make it loud. Kelsey and I will move in as they move towards you, get the marines, get out real quick to Enos' building and then call for evac. Sound good?" Ryan offered, his plan obviously flawed, they all knew it, but it was a difficult situation.

"Do it." Will answered as he drew his weapon from behind a concrete slab used as covered.

"Evac mission is a go, do it boys." Ryan ordered, Benjamin and Will beginning to engaged halfway through his sentence.

"Hey motherfuckers!" Benjamin shouted as he sprinted at top speed at an elite who turned just too late, taking a shoulder to the gut, knocking it down.

Will gunned downed a grunt and two shield jackals with their backs turned to him. After that, he was conspicuous.

With a heavy boot, Benjamin kicked a jackal's shield, sending it to the ground. The elite he slammed into stood up behind him, a quick shotgun blast ending the alien's story right then.

"We making enough noise for your guys, boss?" Benjamin said as he put bullets into a group of grunts.

"They're rounding the mall now. Kelsey, move up and meet me at the front door." Ryan went to the position along with Kelsey, bad vibes on the mind. As he opened the door, he was met with a high powered sniper round in his shoulder, a round meant for ripping through tanks piercing his armor through and through. He fell to the ground with a shout, clutching his wound.

"FRIENDLIES! Friendlies you asses!" Kelsey said with a hand in the air as she went to Ryan's side.

"Shit. We got reinforcements guys!" The sniper waved an okay to his men before taking off his ODST helmet. The rest of the marines came running out into the lobby of the mall to see their rescuers.

"Hey! Spartan! Listen, the covenant, they speak... Th-they speak" The winded ODST was struggling to breathe, still suffering from shock at the news and an obvious plasma wound in his chest that glowed in the dark.

"English! Yeah, we know. Let's just fucking leave, now. ENOS! Call in evac! I'm down, so cover us hard, please." Ryan groaned as Kelsey helped him up. They got outside the building, the two Spartans, three marines, and three ODST's running across the street towards Enos' building.

"On your six! Surprise wraiths cornered and are coming for you!" Enos shouted into the mic as she shot the two gunners and began chipping away at the roof of the driver's seat.

The two wraiths fired at Enos' position, hitting the source of her fire almost exactly. Ryan looked up, his left arm limp and his right armed to see the explosion. He heard radio static.

"This is going to shit. Keep moving! Enos, Tony, reply." Ryan ordered, a wraith mortar blowing up behind him, killing a marine.

_"This is Tony. Fuck. Enos is fine. Her rifle's melted and her helmet is damaged. I called evac, their ETA is ten minutes."_ Anthony replied, the sounds of a pissed Enos curing in the background.

"Got it, hold position. Will, Ben, how you guys holding up?"

Will sprinted around the corner towards one of the wraiths, Benjamin behind him. He came up behind the one farthest back, jumping onto it and jamming an armed grenade into a circular motor-looking bit in the back. It exploded seconds later.

"There were too many to fight. Regrouping now." Will said as he ran towards the group, who were also fleeing. As Will spoke, Benjamin latched himself onto the side of the other wraith, crawling to the front to rip the roof door off and put shells into the driver, stopping the vehicle immediately.

"Wooo!" Benjamin cried, fist into the air as he hopped off the covenant tank.

The group of marines and shock troopers made it inside the building along with Ryan and Kelsey. Benjamin and Will weren't far behind.

"The hell happened to you?" Benjamin asked when he saw and ODST fill Ryan's wound with bio-foam.

Ryan laugh as he pointed to a ODST standing shamefully off to the side. Benjamin took one look at him, drew him magnum, and fired. The marine would have been dead if Will wasn't paying attention and/or standing right next to Benjamin.

"The hell is wrong with you?!" Kelsey pushed Benjamin as the marine fell back from fear, clutching at his chest, checking for wounds.

"Ever hear of friendly-fucking-fire?! He could have killed Ryan!" Benjamin pushed her back.

"It was an accident! He was defending his position and we rushed in there! That doesn't mean you should blow his fucking brains out!" Kelsey stepped to him. Though Benjamin was taller than she was, she seemed to match up to him. She was ready to fight him.

"Alright, alright! Enough! Jesus. We'll put everyone in a combat sim when we get home. First, we need to hold off every alien in this god damned city that wants us dead outside. Nine more minutes, and our sniper, not the person, the person's weapon, is down! We need to troubleshoot this if we're going to make it two minutes." Will said, his tone volatile and his voice raised.

"Eh, you. What's your name, trooper?" Ryan pointed to the guy who shot him.

"Uh, Kennedy, sir. Uh, sorry for shooting you. Not actually a sniper, our guy was taken out." He said, timidly.

"Jesus! Then what are you? Dead weight?" Benjamin said, stepping to him before backing off, noticing Kelsey's stare.

"F.N.G." He said, backing away.

"Doesn't matter, I'm fine. Listen, I need you to take that thing up to another Spartan. She's our sniper, she'll save our asses. Do that, and come back here. Double time, GO!" Ryan ordered, starting off gently and nicely and ending with a shout, sending the F.N.G. running up the stairs.

"What are you guys staring at me for? Get into defensive positions. Windows, doors, you know the drill." Ryan said in a confused tone, pointing around. Everyone did as they were told.

The firefight was long with minimal casualties. One ODST took a round to the throat, killing him in a matter of seconds. Another soldier, a marine, was killed by a charging elite, whom was taken care of by a nearby Will.

They held out, wave after wave of covenant forces running to them, throwing down cover that got dropped closer and closer as time went on. Enos, without the aid of herHUD, was able to take out several snipers and ground forces. On her last mag, she took out the driver of one of the aforementioned wraiths. The other wraith was taken out by Kelsey, armed with one of the ODST's grenade launcher.

_This Zulu 9-21. No need for flare, we can see where the covenant are shooting. Get to cover, providing my share for drinks tonight, over."_ The pelican pilot said as he engaged the covenant, blowing almost all of them away with one run and sending the rest retreating by the second. They landed shortly afterward.

"You do not know how happy we are to see ya, Zulu." Ryan said, patting the cockpitwindow as he walked passed it.

"The feeling's hardly mutual, Sierra, you armored guys make me feel like I'm driving in my third trimester." The pilot said, snickering afterwards.

"Yeah, whatever man. Just take us home." Will commented as he sat down, putting his hands and his head on his lap. The ODST who shot Ryan sat across from him.

"Hey, thanks for, you know, not letting me get shot." Kennedy said gratefully.

"No problem, man. Just, uh, look before you react. You're an ODST, you should know that." Will said calmly.

"I don't think I've slept since before we got here. Just the jitters, you know?" Kennedy laughed.

"No, I don't. Giant cyborg slash walking tank, remember?" Will joked, imitating a robot.

"Haha, yeah."

Something about the ODST's name reminded Will of something. Some weird feeling in his gut wanted to tell him something, but he didn't know what. In fact, the thought bother him all the way home.

**End of Arc 1: Harvest**


	4. Chapter 4: Blood to Bleed

**Arch 2: Eridanus II**

**Blood to Bleed**

"So we finally get paint-jobs, and you guys just had to get tacky with it." Tony said, rubbing on the new color scheme on his repaired armor. He had a darker variant of green that the original sets had, his service tag in bold white numbers on the left side of his breastplate.

Enos was, of course, decked out in a dark gray/black. Her armor, now her's and her's alone, was personalized a bit. Her service tag written in bold white on the left side of her breastplate, 3 bullet casings strapped to the right side.

"What're the casings for?" Ryan said, pointing to Enos.

"Every ten headshots I get. Once I pass two hundred, I'll make it every hundred." She said plainly.

"How do you know you'll live that long?" Tony said, a smirk under his helmet.

"Because I'm not danger-close, numb nuts." Enos shot back.

"Cool it. We're all looking very fresh and battle-ready. Save the insults for the covies." Ryan ordered, sending Tony and Enos' eyes to the floor as they simply replied "Yes sir". Ryan's armor was a dark red, a crimson/maroon color. He had a large bowie-type knife strapped to his left hip, his SMG placed on the other.

"Any idea to what kind of situation we're dropping into, sir?" Kelsey asked formally. Kelsey's armor was an off-white color; while not in the least bit stealthy, it did prove useful to use lighter colors in the active camo tests that proved to not totally make the user invisible.

"No clue. We'll assume hot until the field proves otherwise." Ryan lowered his voice, not totally used to the formality in which he's being treated.

"Seems a bit too nice. Giving us some leave time, patching up our armor and giving us paint jobs. Now that we're useful, I guess we're finally being treated like the UNSC's greatest assets." Ben said, arms crossed and head down. His armor was a pure black, significantly darker than Enos'. His knife was placed on the small of his back, shotgun laid on his lap.

"The UNSC would hate to have Spartans on the insurrectionist's side, Ben. It's smart to keep us happy." Will said calmly, annoyed with Ben's comment. Will's armor was a deep, dark blue. He fiddled with his MA5K in his hand, and he had a shiny new machete on his back, it now reinforced with stronger metals than the last he had.

The pelican rocked, the red light flashing above the Spartans. The pilot shouted "Hang on! Banshee on our tail!"

Rocking suddenly to the right, the Spartans soon realized they should put their harnesses on. A soldier, probably a co-pilot, came to the back to check their harnesses, giving a thumbs up with each strap he pulled on. As he went back to the front of the vehicle, the Spartans could hear a banshee bomb fire, the hit causing an explosion inside the pelican, killing the co-pilot.

"We're going in hot! The LZ is hot and we're all gonna die if I don't land this thing! Jump out on my go!" The pilot yelled over the on-deck speakers.

The Spartans stood, readied their weapons, and held on to the bars above them as they saw the back door open. There was a battle going on below, the city lights low while the glow of plasma weapon fire shot all across the city in the darkness of night and haze of rain.

They got closer to the ground, ducking and weaving to evade the banshees riding their coat-tails. They eventually came out of the jungle of buildings and explosions and onto a transit of freeways and overpasses leading into, out of, and around the city. The road became closer and closer until the pilot gave the order.

Will and Ryan were the first off, Tony and Kelsey seconds behind them, and Ben and Enos last off. They all hit the concrete, some rolling, some landing on a knee or both feet, but they were all okay. They turned to look at their pelican, still being chased by a flock of banshees shooting close behind, but mostly boosting to keep up. The pilot made a smart choice; going back into the city to help him in his evasion.

"Alright, you know the drill people. We go in, kill every unfriendly in sight, help where we're needed. If we're going to keep this planet alive, we're need to eliminate any and all covenant presence in Elysium City. It's about an hour's jog to the city limits and we're exposed. Ben is vanguard, Will you're rearguard. We're Oscar Mike." Ryan gave the signal to move forward as the Spartans began moving forward into Elysium City, watching for any signs of attack on the exposed, gridlocked overpass.

* * *

It was approaching the darkest hour of the night, no definitive moonlight to brighten the way. The Spartans had just entered the city limits, moving through the low-payed urban areas. Spray paint showing who owned what parts of what block, all of which didn't matter at all anymore. The buildings were modern, but destitute and mistreated, the occasional well kept house usually was covered in battle scars from both human and covenant forces. Signs of the brute's liking of human meat showed up in piles once every-so-often.

"Jesus." Is all Will could muster up to say, still watching the rear of the group, turning around once every other minute, often looking backwards even more frequently. But it had seemed that this area was already sacked, the current action taking place in the center of the city, which was more than a bit of a walk away.

"Hold it." Ben said, lifting his fist in the air as he stopped in the middle of the cracked street, taking a knee in the middle of a rain puddle.

"Status?" Ryan whispered.

"Movement, 3 O'clock." Ben replied, also in a whisper.

"Will, Kels, check it out. We'll cover you." Ryan ordered, keeping the low tone in case there was someone who was listening.

Will turned around from his rearguard position and moved towards Ben's 3 O'clock, Tony taking Will's place. Kelsey was at the door of the sacked building first, putting her back to the wall just to the left of the door. Will took right and turned the knob, Kelsey popping her body out and entered, gun raised up to her shoulder.

"Clear." Kelsey said after checking at the top of the stairs before her, the rooms to her left and right, all from her standing position. Will came in behind her, walking into the room to the left, Kelsey to the right.

They both sounded off "Clear." after a few seconds of looking around. As they investigated further, Kelsey headed up the stairs, Will finding nothing downstairs or in a small hidey-hole under a rug. Nothing.

"Will, on me, upstairs." Kelsey said with a medium voice, just loud enough for Will to hear.

Will came up the stairs, Kelsey's back appearing at the top of them. He came up beside her, looking at the source of the movement.

"Demons..." The dying elite before them said weakly, reaching for its energy sword, which it dropped as soon as it activated the blade.

"Ryan, this is Kelsey. We found the source of movement, over."

"Copy, Kels. Anything I should be worried about?"

"Negative, delta niner-niner. Just a wounded split-jaw." Kelsey said with a nose-deprived voice, mimicking Ryan's tone.

"Yeah, okay smart-ass. Put it down and regroup ASAP. I'm getting a bad feeling just sitting out here." Ryan ended the comm.

Kelsey stepped forward, drawing her knife to put the elite out quickly and quietly. It retaliated, drawing it's energy gauntlet and going for the Spartan's neck. Kelsey's reaction was flawless, she backed her head away and grabbed the elite's wrist. She lifted it up above her head as she jammed the thick combat knife into the elite's neck, ending it's life in a cough and growl, the noise liquid-sounding because of the blood.

As one last act of retaliation, the elite weakly smacked at Kelsey's helmet, the life leaving its body halfway through the hit. The four-fingered hand bumped against her head and slowly slid off, purple blood smearing on the side of her white helmet.

"I dig the new paint-job." Will joked as Kelsey stood up, putting her knife back into place.

"You can hose me off when we're entrenched in the city center again." Kelsey said as she walked pass Will and headed down the stairs.

"I don't think alien blood mixes well with water. It might explode like sodium or something." Will said quieter than before as they exited the building and into the rain. The blood rushed off of Kelsey's armor as she put her hands out to her side and cocked her head to the side at Will.

"Hey. Quick screwing around. Back to positions, we're needed in this combat situation two hours ago." Ryan ordered, standing behind Ben, who was now standing.

There was a thunder clap and a lightning flash. Just then, the rain came down harder, becoming very loud, which was good. Now, the Spartans could move faster without the fear of exposing themselves via heavy booted footsteps. They were double time towards the city as more and more fires lit up the skyline.

* * *

Will led with a right jab straight to the approximate nose of the charging elite, making the mistake of leading with a left cross. It staggered, the weight behind Will's fist tremendous. The blue Spartan used the few seconds of freedom to bring his machete out to assist him. The jab could stun the elite for so long, it already readying it's energy sword as Will attacked.

Knowing well that an energy sword would simply melt his beloved blade in half, Will raised his armed hand behind his body, making the elite prepare for a clash, sword held horizontally above its head, just as Will intended.

Will clutched the elite's wrist and yanked its arm upwards, allowing a straight shot to the elite's dome for Will to split.

With the threat to Will now dead, the Spartan looked around to see his teammates finish off the last of their targets. Ryan's kill was the simply slit of an elite's threat. Ben was finishing violently caving a brute's head in with his fist. Enos capped a jackal with her magnum as Tony mercy-killed a dying elite with his DMR. Kelsey was done before Will, apparently. She surveyed the room just as Will was.

"We all clear?" Ryan said, watching the dark purple blood rinse off of him via the heavy rain.

"Looks like it." Enos replied as she placed her magnum on her hip.

"Okay. So, we've been redirected to the western side of the city to cut off and eliminate a covenant supply convoy. Reinforcements will be limited, but they'll be there. We're going to lose this city if we do not stop this supply run. Let's just feel lucky that our AA's disallowed their naval support." Ryan seemed to veer off into a slight rant.

"Anyways, we're not that fast. If we move fast, we'll have time to set something. Move, delta. Double time." He began smiling to himself before going back into his commander mindset, ordering the Spartans forward in their standard formation.

There was no movement on any of Delta's radars as they moved to the cut off point. Once there, with a predicted half an hour to set up, they were more than ready when the convoy came.

* * *

This was his first assignment since the near-death experience that dishonored the zealot. X'zora stood proud among his comrades, the circumstances being so that it seemed he was the reason the conflict he nearly died in was because of his valor, being the only Sangheili to survive from the Demon raid on Harvest.

His hooves beating against the strange human pseudo-rock streets, X'zora scanned the buildings high above and rises in the walkways all around him, hoping for a fight with humans to crush. In his mind, he was majorly dishonored, each human kill slightly bringing his faith in himself back, each Demon he slayed did that tenfold.

Of course, after a while, there was an attack, his convoy being a high-value target. There was a loud crack and boom, probably a obnoxiously loud human sniper. A fellow soldier's scream from behind convinced X'zora of that fact. He drew his blade, expecting a rush of human marines.

That didn't happen.

From the high-rises and tall buildings, dangerously accurate human gunfire tore through X'zora's forces as he body-checked a door open to get to cover. He turned, the only smart Sangheili officers and a few minors followed him inside while the cannon fodder was slaughtered in the streets.

"Up." X'zora said simply in his native language.

They totaled up to seven Sangheili soldiers led by X'zora, the eighth. Having made their way up the stairs and onto the roof, the first target was in sight. Just one demon who hadn't seen them yet.

X'zora waved his soldiers to attack the others on the other buildings as he headed toward the big, blue demon.

* * *

Will fired down at the the covenant in the street below him. Luckily enough for him, he decided to take cover to reload, allowing him to see the familiar, lumbering, angry elite march towards.

"Oh you gotta be fucking kidding me." Will said as he rolled out of the way of a violent vertical slash. When he landed on his feet, Will drew his machete, sending the elite into a blood-rage of a sort.

_I don't a frozen lake to try and drown him with. I might be screwed..._

The elite charged forward, surprising Will with a heavy kick to the chin, knocking him on his back while he was expecting another slash.

It marched forward as Will tried to recover from the blow, his helmet now crooked and off somehow. The elite grabbed Will by the ankle and yanked him towards it, energy sword in the air.

Will wrapped his left leg behind the elite's right "knee", bending it forwards and knocking the titan on the floor next to him. Will then grabbed his machete and raised it, ready to stab to kill.

The elite retaliated, rolling its body into Will, causing his blade to plunge right into the approximate bicep of the elite's left arm, which it soon used to punch him and knock Will off of it.

* * *

The demon used dishonorable tactics, knowing well that it could not compare to X'zora's level of skill. The demon's blade drove into X'zora's left arm, which he was just about to use to attack. The punch followed through the pain, the zealot succumbing to the pain and pushing the demon back with his right arm.

Using this time, X'zora tore the demon's blade from his arm, bent it, and threw it from the building before using his energy sword to seer the would closed on both sides, stopping the bleeding.

"You." X'zora said in the human's disgusting tongue. "I will kill you."

"Blow me." Will said as he grabbed his magnum with his right arm, brought it up, and began firing.

* * *

The elite was fast, in two steps it was feet in front of the desperate Will, who was backing up as he fired. The elite slashed the magnum just as its energy shield cracked. Will knew he could kill it much easier now. He dropped the magnum and stepped back as he reached for his knife to finish it. But there was a jerk in the elite's movement before it stood completely still, laughing.

Will looked around when he heard the sound of metal hitting concrete. He looked down, blue MJOLNIR gauntlet rolling on the floor next to him. A right gauntlet, on his right side.

"No..." Will looked over to his arm, amputated at the shoulder almost perfectly. By the time he looked back over to the elite, its blade was already in his midsection.

"X'zora is the name of your killer." The elite said just before yanking the blade out and kicking Will off the building.

There were a few seconds of cognitive thought with Will. He thought of the training, years and years of it leading up to a death like this. Thoughts about how he, strangely, died in an fairly honorable way. He thought about his team finding his body after the mission's success, how they'd react. Ben's stupid smirk as they called heavy lifting gear after the city was won back, or how he'd just be glassed if they lost. He thought about where'd he go when it finally went all black. So many religions and places he could go that he lost track. Personally, he liked the thought of just starting over again, maybe this time getting a life less stressful. A life less frightening. Less studious, less demanding, less hellish. Less military.

After the reincarnation thought, the real panic of dying hit Will, his last thoughts being hundreds of frightened images that weren't real. His last split seconds in the air felt like years of torture and terror, relief only coming when he hit the pavement.

The relief was sudden, black, and numb. Will felt like he no longer existed. A weightlessness that rivaled the feeling of space.

It was almost perfect, feeling disembodied. Will tried to breath, and an intense pain hit him. He tried again, it was worse this time. He suddenly felt like he was drowning, not getting enough air. He began struggling, and he felt a hand in the darkness touch his back and rub his face as he was relieved of the sense of drowning. He could breathe again.

And with one last breath, he finally just stopped.

**End of Arc 2: Eridanus II**


	5. Chapter 5: Homecoming

**Arch III: Recovery**

**Homecoming**

With a desperate gasp for air, Will jumped upright, his vision a blur of white and all he could hear was this high, screeching, monotonous sound.

There were these faded black apparitions all around him, a muffled clash of high and low voices yelled into his hear but dulled in comparison to the white noise. Hands touched Will's chest, trying to push him back down into the ground. He resisted, attempting to bring his right arm up to attack before realizing he had none. The notion suddenly sharpened his vision as he looked over at his stump on his shoulder for a few seconds before fainting once more.

Will, after that, was not conscious for a few weeks, giving the operators time to stabilize him and restrain him if something like that happened again.

But when he woke up, Will calmly opened his eyes, only seconds passing to him. He remembered not having an arm and almost laying out a nurse or something, so he decided to let his eyes focus before he reacted to what was around him.

It was a clean, empty, purely white room with medical equipment neatly placed on tray tables and various chairs were strewn about the room like someone was here recently.

"Hello?" Will said, barely able to speak, his voice low and scratchy. He jumped slightly when someone walked into the room, holding something made of metal.

"Hey there. You're awake. We were just getting ready to put this on, like a surprise for when you woke up." This pretty little blonde nurse said as she laid the metal arm on the bed next to Will.

The Spartan lifted the shirt, revealing they already attacked the nerves of his arm to a port for the arm. He slept through most of the pain of having a robotic arm.

"Wait, does it always have to look likethat?" Will asked, pointing at the cosmetically unappealing arm.

"Well, I'm sure they can make armor to put over it, and you can always wear long sleeves." She smiled, most likely not aware of how giggly she was, touching her lip with her index finger as she laughed. "Do you have any kids?"

"No. I don't think I have a libido." Will said plainly.

"Here, look. I had her a few weeks ago." The nurse went for a picture she had in her pocket or somewhere of a little, bright blonde-headed, naked, baby girl.

"Nice." Will said, not knowing how to really respond.

"Her name's Jessica. I got strong genes, her dad's dark headed like no other. She does have his eyes though..." She seemed to wander off, placing her, now her fist, on her lip as she gazed at the picture.

"Yeah, alright. Hey, can I get some wa-" Will began, interrupted by a seemingly furious Doctor Halsey, who charged in the room with a moving table of tools.

"They wanted me to let some kid fresh out of school put your arm on. Instead of _me_. Me. I designed the Spartan armor God damn it. I can put on a an arm. It's not even that well made. You are one of my Spartans. I'll have a better arm for you soon, William. One that looks like a sleeve normally, maybe. And maybe a secondary one for combat that looks like your armor..." Halsey ranted on, Will terrified the whole time that she'd yell at him.

"Sorry for breaking your armor, ma'am." Will said timidly. It'd been so long since he'd seen Halsey that he forgot any good mood she may have been in when he was a child.

"Will. You're alive. You've been more of a gift than you can imagine. You've proven that I need to designed a new variant with a strong hull, and you've built the legend of you Spartan's being immortal. You're fine. Now, hold still, this'll hurt a lot, even for you." She said with care and almost grace to her, a sudden change in her more aggressive tone seconds earlier. She then lifted up the arm and some tool that rotated, something Will'd never seen before.

* * *

"Are you sure, man?" Ryan said, a smile that his friend was making a good decision, but a slight crack in his voice of being without him for a while.

"Yeah. They told me I could be on leave for as long as I needed, and I convinced ONI to tell me where I was born." Will smiled, dufflebag straddled over his left shoulder.

"Where ya from?" Ryan asked, honestly interested.

"Victoria, a fairly small town in the middle of the forest, but it's the biggest for miles or something. Big enough for Halsey to visit, I guess." Will smiled as he began to walk away, still looking at Ryan.

"Hey, Will. Listen man. I'm happy you're going home, but just promise me you'll come back and stay back." Ryan stepped forward quickly, eyes wide.

"Oh. Yeah, man. Definitely. I don't know about staying though, if you look at my track record I might-"

"None of that almost dying shit, okay? No dying. Not you. I got to go before you, that's how this set-up works." Ryan said, his voice becoming more intense.

There was a slight pause as Ryan grabbed both of Will's shoulders while he spoke. Ryan suddenly smiled, patting Will's robotic shoulder lightly before saying "Have a nice trip."

* * *

Will stepped down from the warthog's step, he black boot splatting into the squishy, loose, forest ground. It seemed like the woods the town was built in was untouched in its making. Other than the good sized spot of human livelihood, the forest grew around the roads and houses it laid. in.

_The City of Klickitat, largest city of the colony_ the sign read, Will having never seen a _city_this small before.

This was his home, though. The charm to it felt more like anything he'd ever felt in his life. Before embarking on his actual objective, Will walked around and watched as people happily communicated and acted as though they knew everyone. It was something to experience for Will, seeing this kind of humanity in a body of people rather than the dehumanization of soldiers on the field of battle.

But Will was still young, his early 20's at the most. He may not have been gone very long, but to some people he's been "dead" their entire lives.

Will was unable to crack any records off of ONI, not willing to push for more after granting him a long trip home to relax and experiment on their new combat prosthetic. He wore it like he was wearing a tight-armed long sleeved black shirt and glove, which had a match of on his real hand to match.

The Spartan, completely unarmored, eventually made it to the address on his slip of paper. He noticed a kept up garden out in front of the small, run downed house. He knocked on the door, no answer. He shouted in a socially acceptable volume "Hello!?", still with no answer.

All of a sudden, Will heard a light voice from behind, causing himself to shoot around to look into the eyes of a young woman about his age. She had these ice blue eyes and beautifully shaded skin tone- obviously Caucasian but still slightly brown, bright white teeth, and a soft smile the easily calmed Will down until she touched him.

"Vale!" She yelled, wrapping her arms around the much larger man who she really, really didn't know. "What did they pump you with to get so big, man?"

She patted Will's robotic arm, and he eyes widened with worry as she grabbed the arm, double-checking what she already knew.

"This was because of those damn shock troopers, isn't it? I told you Vale, you can't play hero just because you-"

"I'm not this Vale, guy, you're talking about." Will literally shushed her with his hand waving in front of her mouth, not really knowing how to handle this social situation.

"Wha- what? Then who the hell are you?" Her eyes widening even further and she pushed herself away and stepped back, probably terrified.

"My name is Will nine- uh. My name is William Kennedy, I think." Will said, looking at his cheat sheet for his name, his mother's name and address, and his biological information.

"Ha. Real funny, man. Will died back when we were kids. You can't really expect to just walk into town, telling everyone you're some kid who you obviously fucking aren't, because I watched his casket get lowered into the ground. Really, who are you?" She had a supprising attitude for someone a sweet looking as her, her hands on her hips and her head cocked to the side as she yelled at the confused Will.

"Uh, I'm Petty Officer First Class William-916, Spartan Super Soldier Generation Two. My birth name is William Kennedy and they took me from my home at the age of seven, replaced me with a flash clone who they knew would easily die from a disease in months. I have known nothing my entire life but the military and I have a chance to come home for a while now and I'm looking for my mother. Can you please point me to Darla?" Will said, not knowing how to handle the situation and lead with the full and honest truth.

* * *

The entire afternoon had gone by when the girl was done. She explained, in depth, what happened while Will was away. How his mother had became severely depressed, because Will's clone and Will's biological father, Vance, had died within months of each other when Will was about eight. Before that, Will, the girl, who's name was Aundrea, and Will's younger twin brother Vale were best friends growing up. As they grew older, Vale and Aundrea became close friends throughout school. Vale eventually joined the UNSC when he finally heard what was going on when the released the full story of the covenant.

Aundrea also explained how Darla, Will's mother, died soon after Vale joined the UNSC Marine Corp while she had Aundrea hired to help maintain her garden. She went on to tell about how she felt the need to keep the garden kept, even now that it's been years since she passed.

Will was enthralled, heartbroken, angry, sad, and numb at least six that afternoon in Aundrea's small apartment down a block from his mother's house.

As the day drew to a close, Aundrea took Will to go down and see the family plot of graves.

_William Kennedy- Taken From Us Too Early_

Vance Kennedy- Beloved Son, Brother, Father, Husband, and Devoted Soldier

Darla Kennedy- Mother, Wife, Friend. May You Rest At The Seat of God

Seeing his own grave, knowing some rotted clone was in his place, for some dark reason made Will furious. He cried in pain and anger and swung at the tree next to him, unknowingly using his robotic arm and blowing a horizontal hole through the side of the tree. Aundrea took a scared step back.

"So... Will. What are you now, exactly?" She asked, concern for her safety with that showcase of brute strength.

"I'm a super soldier. I've been trained and augmented to be the best soldier science can make. My bones are almost unbreakable, I can wear really cool armor that weights a literal ton, I can lift a truck, you name it." Will said, smiling and nodding his head as he thought of examples to say.

"... Uh-huh. Well, it's good to have you back Will, I'm sure Vale will be exited if I explain it." Aundrea came up and gave Will a hug, something he had received very few of when he was a child.

Will suddenly remembered this other Spartan, a female. The memory was from his youth, months before the initial augments. This Spartan  
who's name Will could not seem to remember would always hug him and kiss his cheek, an unusual sign of affection from Spartans, really, but one Will did enjoy and was sad over the loss after her augments made her into this quite, brooding soldier, just like the rest of them.

"T-thank you. Could you show me the nearest motel, ma'am?" Will said formally, embarrassed over the few seconds after his hug.

"Nonononono. You came back from the dead, William. You're staying at my place; you can sleep on the couch if you're lucky." Aundrea said, her relaxing smile stretching across her face, not giving Will the power to say no.

* * *

"Will, this is my son, Jean. Jean, this is my friend Will. He's staying with us for a little bit, okay?" She talked down to the boy, who looked as he barely understood what she was saying. He couldn't be more than four years old, but he was covered in food he had acquired all day and he had a toy in his hand that looked beaten to hell.

The existance of this boy, in Will's mind, meant that this woman, the first woman he's met and talked to outside of ONI or the UNSC, this girl he was attracted to, was married. He looked at her hand, no ring. _Well, then, a boyfriend. Someone who wouldn't want some guy sleeping in his house._ Will's breath became more rapid, and for the first time ever he felt enclosed and that he had to get out.

"I don't want to impose on you guys, I'll just-"

"No, it's okay. It'll just be us three." She said, emphasizing the word three.

"But his-"

"He's gone. We'll talk about that another day. But, you're in my house, you're one year younger than me, so I'm putting you to sleep. Jean too. The couch is here and just ask for more blankets if you need some. 'Night." Aundrea picked her son up, all his toys, and shut off the lights behind her as she went down the hallway to put the boy to bed before going to her own room and closing the door behind her.

Will laid on the couch for a while, thinking about all he learned today and everything it will mean to him in his near future. His past may be over, but Will refused to let what happened here not have any effect on his life. He wanted to do something about it.

But, in the middle of amp-ing himself up in his own mind, he passed out never remembering the vow or the determination he had for five or so minutes there.

He was still in his state of recovery. Before he finally laid down for the night, he had to wipe his arm off; the tree he punched causing his stumps to tear and bleed.

It'd be a while before he was combat ready again. Might as well make the most out of it.


	6. Chapter 6: Hero

**Hero**

_Many Years Ago_

"Will! Vale! The fair's here!" The tiny girl said as she charged inside the small house, the boys on the floor fighting while their mother changed the baby girl on the other side of the room.

"Mommy, can we go?" Will stood, looking over at his mom, falling after speaking when Vale grabbed and yanked at his ankle.

"Sure. Be home before late." Their mother said, obviously stressed out from the multiple children around her all day.

"Let's go!" Vale shouted as he pushed Will down to stand up. The two looking almost exactly the same; black hair with small curls, mid-brown skin, and light brown eyes. Will soon caught up and shoved Vale into the wall by the door before exiting with Aundrea.

* * *

"Why do you two always fight?" Aundrea asked casually, Will on her left and Vale walking by her right as the went down the sidewalk.

"It's fun." Will smiled, almost yelling with all his natural energy obviously behind each word.

"It's fun for you cause you always win!" Vale complained across to Will, a little upset that he never seemed to win when they wrestled.

The two stopped, Aundrea continuing ahead of them as they began to violently attack each other until Will tackled Vale to the floor and stood.

"It's so stupid and you guys could get hurt. You should stop." Aundrea said, nose pointed to the air as she strutted along.

"Well you should stop telling us what to do, it's stupid and nobody likes it." Vale said, not quite socially mature enough to make it clear he was half joking.

"Shut up!" Aundrea punched Vale on the shoulder, who laughed at the notion of a threat.

They three entered the fair and were there for the rest of the afternoon. They walked around, several trees invading the park area, as the planet was covered with them. There were a lot of small stand for games or food or both. There was enough to do for hours of joy when these stands were added with the rides in areas recently cleared trees.

"Give it!"

"No, I won it. It's mine." Will said, holding his toy back and pushing Vale away.

"You always get everything. I never get to win! Why? Why can't I ever win!?" Vale yelled, his eyes starting to tear up.

"Because you keep picking fights with someone you can't beat. Leave me alone." Will walked away from Vale slowly, clutching his toy.

"I hate you! I'm going home and telling!" Vale threatened as loud as he could.

"Mom's not stupid. Just go away." Will spat to his brother just before he ran off towards home.

Aundrea came up from behind, shoving Will's shoulder lightly enough to only startle himself slightly.

"That was mean. You always get everything, why didn't you just give him the stupid toy?" Aundrea asked, grudgingly.

"'Cause I won it and he didn't. We sleep in the same room anyways, we'll both use it." Will stuck the toy, which was a stretchy, durable plastic, into his pocket as he followed Aundrea to a place nearby she'd been wanting to show him for a while.

"Look at it. Isn't it huge?" Aundrea pointed up to a lonely tree on top of a barren hill just off of the main road into the city. For walking, it'd be faster to walk down the hill and through the park to enter, but Will paid no attention to that matter, cause the tree was pretty huge.

"How'd you find this?"

"When mom and dad yell, I go outside and walk. I started coming here and looking at the stars. Watch." Aundrea motioned for Will to lay down in the grass. He laid down and rested his head on the tree's exposed root, following her suit.

"The stars look amazing on this side. You can't see them very well when you look towards the city."

"You think I can start calling you Cricket?" Will said randomly after a few moments of silence.

"Why?"

"You have a pet cricket. It's weird and kinda cool. Aundrea is hard to say. Yeah, I'll call you Cricket now." Will laughed as he scanned the stars above him.

"Whatever." She replied under her breath. "You hear about the kids who've been dying off from colds and stuff? It's happening all over. Heard it on the news." Aundrea asked, to Will's morbid surprise.

"I choose not to think about stuff like that. It makes me sad." He replied, trying to be a bit philosophical at least.

"Just saying, it sounds like it'd suck." Aundrea concluded before falling back into the gaze of the stars.

Will hated the though of dying or killing; so much that he would shut his eyes tight until he felt better. He tried it, when upon opening his eyes, the world changed all around him in an instant.

He was on a couch, his body propped up and his hands clutching into the air. Will has had this dream several times, but in such less detail. This time he could feel every detail as if he was there, and he could connect the dots. His brother, mother, sister, _Cricket_. But he could never remember how the night ended.

If Will could ever build up the nerve, he might just ask _Cricket_ what happened next, and why it's the only memory he had.

* * *

Will arose to the small child standing over him, staring.

"Hey there." Will said, trying to not show that it kind of freaked him out.

"Where's your arm?" The kid asked, pointing at Will's robotic arm, recognizing that it should be flesh.

"Lost it fighting monsters."

"You're a soldier like dad?" Jean said, excitedly jumping on the bed next to the now upright Will.

"Uh, yeah. You're dad's a soldier?" Will said, pursuing a conversation with this child.

"He was. We buried him a few months ago." Jean said, breaking eye contact, obviously not comfortable talking about it so soon.

"I'm sorry, kid." Will wasn't really sorry. He just knew it was one of the appropriate things to say in a situation like this, one he's never been in before.

Audrea walked into the front room, joining the two on the couch.

"Sleep well?" She asked with a smile as her son came up and gave her a loving bear hug.

"Had a dream from... From when we were kids. Some fair? You and me under a tree watching the stars. That's it. That's as far as my memory goes. After that, it's blank and then I'm in training as a teen." Will said, glaring at the background as he recollected.

"That was the night before you got sick. I guess it was the night you got, uh, taken." She said, motioning for Jean to leave the room as the conversation continued.

"Oh. I told you I wanted to start calling you Cricket, too. So, I guess I have to keep my promise." Will smiled as her face widened with a smile, remembering she hated that.

"No! I hated that! Your brother called me that for years!" She slapped Will's leg as she laughed.

* * *

"Time 'til?" The man asked, filling the assault rife magazine with bullets.

"We go at noon. About two hours until we roll out, it'll take an hour to get there." The other man took his cigar out and tapped it against the poker table to rid the tip of ash.

"You all know your job. It's about time. Arm up, get ready to go. We hit the town hard, get supplies we need, and we hit the spaceport right after. Simple, lots of loot, but minimal bodies. Civillian casualties are to kept to a minimum. Let's go." The man said, his aging beard was speckled with gray hairs that surrounded his lips. He placed the cigar back in his mouth and headed towards an armed warthog, one of many owned by the militia.

* * *

"Jean is on his way to school. What'd you wanna do?" Audrea asked, closing her front door behind her son.

"Do you have a job?" Will asked, confused.

"I work from home. Upside to working in IT. Uh, you want to go shopping?" Audrea offered.

"For what?"

"Whatever!"

"Why?"

"It's fun."

"Is it?" Will asked, having never shopped for fun.

* * *

Will walked cautiously through the clearing, the tall grass starting halfway through it obscured all vision of the bottom of the treeline. He kept his weapon, a newly acquired battle rifle, up and ready to fire.

Hank jogged forwards, coming up next to the taller Spartan.

"Listen, sir. We appreciate you getting this off the ground. Rounding these guys up has been on our minds for years now, but we're police officers..." Hank approached Will cautiously, his lack of words the entirety of this mission concerning him.

"I apologize for my actions sergeant. Any unarmed or surrendering soldiers from here on will be placed under arrest. I'm just used to fighting an enemy that never surrenders." Will said, smiling, putting Hank's mind at ease as he informed the other officers of what Will just said.

"Hank, know anything about this area of forest?" Will said, quietly as they approached the treeline.

"Yeah. It only gets thicker from here to the coast about two miles in front of us. Why?" Hank responded to the best of his knowledge.

"Their backs are against water?"

"Sort of. It's a sheer cliff for most of the coast on this colony. The parts that come to sea level are parks."

Will silently ordered Hank and the others to stay put behind the tall grass as Will swept the area.

"Looks all-" There was a whizzing sound, then a boom. Will assumed he was hit as a heart-stopping shiver went up his back.

[i]Did I just get pick off?[/i] He said to himself as he examined his own body. Will looked to the police officers huddling over one man on the ground with blood spurting between his fingers as he clutched his chest, now with a wide open hole in it.

"EVERYONE TAKE COVER!" Will said just before the sniper opened fire again, picking off another officer.

Everyone sprinted for the trees, one more officer was killed and another wounded, but a .50 cal graze is very serious.

Will leaned out of cover, a sniper round missing his head by a few feet.

"Grenade launcher, 200 meters ahead." Will ordered, looking for the man he gave the weapon to before noticing he was one of the dead out in the open.

Noticing the urgency in Will's face and the distance from the Spartan the weapon was, Hank made a bold call: he went for the launcher.

"NO!" Will cried as Will sprinted back to the dead police officer, grabbed the grenade launcher, and jumped off the ground when a sniper round dug a hole in the ground next to him.

In a moment of sheer panic, Hank fell to the ground, readied the launcher, and fired at the sniper's crow's nest.

No one but Hank saw the explosion and death of the marksman who was killing their men with no mercy.

But there was no time for celebrating, the infantry no one but the sniper could have called in arrived, firing wildly and charging through the trees.

It didn't take long for the highly trained men on Will's side to pick off the brave and arrest the survivors.

"Where is your base?" Will asked, calmly.

"Fuck off you fucking mother-" Will grabbed the kneeling, handcuffed man by the throat and lifted him up above Will's head, a yard or two from his feet to the floor, then dropped him.

"Where is your base?"

"Jesus! Christ... It's right on the cliff-face, straight ahead." He said, panicking.

"How many?"

"I DON'T FUCKING KNOW! A hundred, tops? I'm just a-" He was interrupted yet again by the same technique of Will's, except with a slight toss upward this time.

"Elaborate." Will said, still very calm.

"You can't let him do this, you're police offic-" The done the same, inturrupted while talking to Hank Willis.

"He's not. Private practitioner. I'm just on a job, distracted by that big ass tree." Hank chuckled to himself as he lit up a cigar and wandered away, pretending to observe nature as Will continued to throw the man slightly higher each time until his ankle twisted.

"FUCKSHITFUCK! OKAY! Around two hundred, we have turrets, snipers, and ordinance set up, waiting! We heard you had a Spartan and prepared! Can you stop?" THe man looked up to Will, begging.

"Fine." Will shrugged as he nudged the man just hard enough to knock him over.

"Rodgers, see if you can recover the sniper from the crows nest. Will, I think we could use your skill set to scope this place out before we engage." Hank ordered around, but asking Will very formally.

"Get me a sniper scope and lets go, then."

* * *

The recon was done, the plan was set, and the men were in motion. Will and Hank realized they were heavily out-numbered. With his past military special ops experience and Will's tank-like combat-style, Hank lead a flanking team while Will lead the charge with the bulk of the officers.

The attack hadn't started yet, Will and his men laid in the fallen leaves and tall grass on a small hill half a mile away from the base, nothing separating them but a few thick trees and open clearing.

"I've got three snipers perched, possibly more. On my signal, marksmen, take them out." Will said over the radio, as he held his hand up in the air, holding perfectly still before giving the signal.

The enemy snipers were dead before they ht the ground, the high caliber rounds ripping them apart before they could react, the shock and sudden blood-loss shutting their brains down quickly.

Will gave another signal before a volley of several frag grenades, launched grenades, and a few rockets blew apart the metal barricades that protected the enemies inside.

As turrets and vanguards popped up along the fairly small wall, the skilled police snipers picked them off with little trouble. When the rebels stopped sending men up, right as Will got worried, the low whistle of mortar fire rang in the air.

This was looking and sounding more and more like war as Will pressed on. He looked over to his snipers, scrambling to their feet too little too late as they were blown into literal pieces not too far from the Spartan's position, but far enough the mortar fire did little.

Suddenly, Will was knocked over from his side._Mortar? Am I hit?_

The Spartan looked over, his fairly weak marine-grade shoulder armor dented heavily by a projected sniper rifle smashing into him. It was bent out of shape and was in no way combat effective, so he went back to suppressing fire with his battle rifle. 

* * *

The nerves were the worst of it. The fear that a wave would smash into them at the right time, sending the unprepared men plummeting into the rocky shores Victoria had to offer. As an ex special operations, Hank was best prepared for crazy stunts like this, even his best police officers, however, were not.

They had to shimmy along the ridged, vertical rocks to get directly behind the base and successfully flank the enemies. The worst part was: this was Hank's idea.

"This is fucking crazy!" one of the officers exclaimed as he clutched onto a new hold, his leg shaking furiously.

"Quiet. They can't hear us, but we need to stay focused." Hank replied, grunting as he made a risky jump to a fairly stable rock that shot out the side of the cliff, allowing him, and all who followed, a chance to rest.

Eventually, with no casualties in their six-man squad, they made it to the back of the base. No wall to protect infantry units, just a sheer cliff-face. Their mistake.

At this point, with Will's slowly advancing team and the silent blades picking off any unwitting soldiers, their victory came quickly, within hours they surrendered, loading up in warthogs to custody while Hank and the other officers counted their dead.

"These losses. They'd be... Less... They'd be less if the UNSC picked up a God damn-" Hank stuttered and staggered as he slowly gave into his rage, his hands clenching when Will placed his hand lightly on his shoulder.

"You know better than anyone else here. Thinking like that will break you. C'mon, we need to get these men home." Will said kindly as he lifted his hand off of Hank and picked up a body of a dead officer.

"Never thought I'd say this, but, I miss my wife." Hank said as he wrapped a limp, bloody arm around his shoulder, carrying it alongside Will.


	7. Chapter 7: Cricket

**Cricket**

The heavy forest rain battered the dark green armor on the men. Will sitting passenger seat, he looked back to the police officers in the back of the vehicle. They had a different look on their face. They had never been in a war before.

And this war, with other humans, was almost alien to Will. He had done it so few times until today, it made him feel a deep, hollow feeling in his gut.

They stopped as the convoy of men entered town, several people exiting their homes to see their loved ones returned. Some returned to their sobbing families, and others cried as they broke the news to their friend's wives and families. It wasn't the glorious return that they had in mind when they left. It never is.

Aundrea and Jean lived too far from the convoy to meet him as he returned. He began walking down the street, blood washed up, leaving his armor almost completely clean.

"Spartan." A deep, familiar voice said from behind Will, who turned.

"Hm?"

"There's a bar a few blocks from the station. Why don't you grab a drink there sometime?" Hank said, respectfully.

"Yeah. Okay." Will nodded as he turned and continued walking, his feet splashing up puddles.

As he continued forward down the flat, straight road, Will took off his helmet and threw it in the bushes next to him. He felt something tear off of it as he removed it. Will stroked his short, wiry hair, examining his head and finding a half-healed wound. Grazed bullet to the side of the head he must not have noticed.

_Heat of the moment._

Will eventually made his way to Aundrea's house, along with some time to be inside his own head, reviewing gory details about the battle.

He knocked on the door, it was thrown open seconds later, like Aundrea was waiting for him.

"Will!" Aundrea sighed, throwing her arms around the towering man. Will returned only one arm in the hug. "You okay?"

"Arm went limp a bit ago. I'll be fine." Will said calmly after Aundrea waved him in. He motioned towards the shower.

"Yeah. Go for it." She replied to the implied question.

As Will marched down the hallway, Jean came peeking out of his room just before Will entered the bathroom.

"You go fighting?" Jean asked, calmly.

"Yeah." Will replied plainly.

"You win?"

"Yeah- yeah we won." Will smiled.

"Is killing someone hard?" Jean asked, almost suddenly, the question hitting Will a lot harder than he thought it wuld.

"My question first." Will walked down the hall again and crouched down, now face to face with the boy.

"What?"

"Do you hate it... Do you hate it when you pee on your hands?" Will said, suddenly flicking the rainwater of his hands into Jean's face, causing him to giggle and retreat to his room once more.

* * *

Will exited the bathroom, gym shorts and a tank top his wardrobe, expecting to sleep.

"What happened?" Aundrea asked, sitting on the couch, drinking a glass of wine.

"We, uh. We won." Will sat down next to her, grasping the winglass Aundrea handed him.

"You're bleeding." Aundrea said, pointing at Will's stump shoulder as she grabbed a rag.

"It's fine, I gotta take it off when I-" Will got interrupted as Aundrea returned to the couch with an alcohol dabbed rag touched his bleeding stump. It hurt, but not enough to make him wince.

"One time, when we were kids... I got us lost in the woods outside of town. Vale and I were panicking and crying. We were young, we didn't know what to do, but, you had us climb rocks and trees... I-I mean it took us all day, but you found us a way back home. You always come back home." Aundrea said, starting to tear up, burying her head in Will's un-mutilated shoulder. He placed his cold robotic hand on the back of her head as the crying stopped. She rose her head back up.

"Vale is... Vale's dead, Will. Your brother. He's dead."

Will stood up, clutching his mouth tightly with his organic left hand. HE had only met his brother, and ODST, once on Harvest. He didn't even know. The man donated blood to help Will recover from his unjury, even with his rare blood type.

"I wish I got to meet him. As my brother." Will sat back down, not making eye contact with Aundrea for a couple minutes.

"Vale was the kind of guy you only had to meet once. They came to us, he listed us as his next of kin. They came and told me how he died. Saved a little boy and girl from a colony under alien attack. They made it. He didn't. Will, I'm sorry." She placed a soft hand on Will's leg.

"Don't be. I didn't know him. You lost a life-long friend."

"Will, you lost your other half. It's okay." Will looked up to Aundrea, grabbing her hand on his lap and placing his head on her shoulder, where they laid most of the night until they relocated into Aundrea's room.

"That's the signal! Go! Go! Go!" Will cried as he stood up out of the bushes, leading the charge to the very front of the fortified wall, a flanking team his greatest asset as of now. A turret turned it's attention to him. Will returned fire just too late, a bullet knocking him to the floor as he killed the gunner, who's body knocked over the turret to fall to Will's level.

The Spartan examined himself, no major injury. _Might have just grazed the armor._

The closest to the wall and his men getting set up to slaughter behind him Will sprinted top speed to the turret and opened fire on the wall right above him, killing dozens. A sniper round fired, tearing the arm off of a officer right next to Will. He looked over, the sniper aiming another shot as a knife slid between his spine and twisted them apart.

Will went to tend the down man. He died from shock and blood loss almost immediately.

Will reached into his pack, placed the explosives on the wall, and, still hugging the wall, ran a ways away and let it blow the bastards to bits.

Hank wiped his knife clean of sniper blood before raising his gun to put down attacking rebels. These men were untrained, undisciplined. They should have given up the moment they were flanked.

As Will and the officers poured into the walls, Hank noticed large doors a ways away open, a large, metallic humanoid figure stomping out of it.

* * *

Will woke up, his body halfway off of the bed. He stood and looked down the hallway just in time to see Aundrea let Jean out of the front door and close it behind him.

"How ya feeling?" She asked, touching his face.

"Sore." Aundrea slapped Will lightly and laughed.

"Quit being a bitch. C'mon. We're getting you clothes." Aundrea said as she began getting money and other shopping essentials together as Will stood there confused.

"Why? I have clothes." Will asked, pointing to his dufflebag of military training and casual outfits.

"Actual clothes that aren't battle hardened. It'll be fun. Get ready."

* * *

"This isn't very fun." Will moped around, confused as to why they were in the women's underwear section when they were shopping for him.

"It is! One more shirt and we'll start on you." She said, rummaging through shirts with no end in sight. Will located and sat down in a seat for thirty more minutes before they did actual shopping for him.

It was the least fun Will ever had.

* * *

Will carried the heavy bag on his left, organic, shoulder. Aundrea banned him from lifting things with his robotic arm until it healed fully.

Jean grabbed the Spartan's hand as they walked to the vehicle where Aundrea waited in the driver seat.

"Hurry up!" She said, annoyed they were taking forever.

"You sure this is a good idea?" Will said after tossing the bag in the back and entered the passenger seat, clutching his arm.

"You need more fun in your life. Besides, no one gets in the water, it's almost at freezing cause it's from the Arctic. It's just a nice day to be there." Aundrea replied with a calming smile.

"Why is Jean bringing swimming stuff?"

"The kid plays in the snow in a tank and shorts. His father's kid." Aundrea shrugged as she pulled out of the house and headed towards the small beach, one of the few non-cliff coasts on the colony. A major vacation spot due to its warmer disposition.

The water was a different kind of blue there. Will had never seem anything like it. Reach was beautiful, but his home world was so natural and wonderful. He was in a perfect moment until he realized he only had a short time until his medical leave was finished.

Will stepped, bare footed, into the warm sand. The sun was in his eye, no HUD or treeline to protect his eyes from it. He grabbed sunglasses and placed them over his light brown, almost hazel eyes.

Jean was scrambling around in his seat, taking his shirt off and exposing his light brown skin, obviously a mixed child. His hair was light and curly, and his eyes were blue, just like his mother's.

"Will, have you ever been to a beach before!?" Jean asked, exited and jumping around as he exited the vehicle.

"Uh, once. We were on Eridanus II before I"we raided the city. There was this jackal with his chest torn ope-" Will started before a sudden heat was on the back of his head, he turned, Aundrea was giving him a look. "Never. Never seen a beach in my life."

"Jean, go and play. Mommy and Will need to be boring for a minute." Aundrea lead the shirtless boy forward as he made a b-line to the heavily avoided water.

"What's up?" Will asked sensing something was off.

"I gotta tell you something, Will... Kinda brought you here in public to avoid any overreactions." Aundrea said, cautiously.

"What?" Will said, not realizing how serious the situation is.

"I'm pregnant. It's yours." Aundrea said, quickly and with a deep breath.

"From the sex, right?" Will asked, casually.

"Wait, what? Yes?" Aundrea asked, confused with the question.

"Okay. Just making sure. They never really explained that in full in between training. I'll see if I can botch more leave time." Will shrugged with a smile before turning towards the beach and chasing Jean, leaving Aundrea extremely confused.

"Wait, wait. Will. You're not freaking out? You're going to have a huge responsibility!" Aundrea yelled, almost angry at the lack of panic from Will.

"I don't understand why you're upset." Will said, completely honest and confused.

* * *

"Do you really think it's such a good idea to go to work today?" Will said with his hands up cautiously, standing between Aundrea and the front door, Jean staring distantly with his school bag over his shoulder.

"Will, I'll be in a hospital. It's the best possible place to spend my goddamn time." Aundrea groaned. She grabbed her datapad and began typing as she led her son out the door.

"Okay. Goodbye, Cricket." Will waved, awkwardly as his very pregnant girlfriend her child left.

Will's overall number socially awkward moments had slowly whittled down to an all around normal amount over the past eight months. While Aundrea and he have begun to drift apart, Will believed that the normal hormones and a child will bring them back together, otherwise the whole situation would turn out to be very confusing.

The robotic arm stump had healed at this point, the joints no longer bleeding and the nerves staying connected to the arm. He could easily go back to his team. His friends. But, for Aundrea and the baby, it was worth a try to stay for the rest of his leave for the next year.

But since everyone was out of the house, Will saw a chance to keep his workout routine. He had to stay in shape and push the limits of the connectivity of his nerves to his arm. With no power armor to assist his movement, he would need to coordination for a while.

Wailing on the punching bag in front of him, Will used the time to think. A baby on the way, his future with Aundrea and Jean, the war he'd return to soon enough... The elite who took his arm.

That rooftop, the elite, the whole conflict. Will knew he wasn't strong enough. He knew that there may be another encounter with that same elite, or one with one stronger and more deadly. He couldn't risk dying now. Especially since he has something more than a military to fight and live for.

* * *

"I'm here! I'm here! Is she okay?" Will panted, just exiting the fastest sprint of his life when he got the call. Aundrea was in labor, and the look on the nurses face worried Will beyond all belief.

"Something went wrong. Aundrea is fine enough, but the baby didn't make it, sir. I'm so sorry." The nurse said, with a slight tear forming in the pit of her eye.

Will shoved her aside, barging into the room where Aundrea laid under the covers, curled up into a ball.

"Baby..." Will sat beside her, stroking her hair.

"Will... I'm sorry..." Aundrea replied, starting off strong but breaking down almost immediately. She buried her face into Will's lap and cried into it as Will did the same thing into his own hand.

Suddenly, however, Will's head perked up just before he stood.

"I have to make a call." Will almost shouted before marching out of the door.

A few moments later, Will had reached a terminal and contacted the smartest person he knew and could trust: Halsey.

"Will... I'm so sorry. I couldn't imagine. I'm afraid I cannot bring back the dead, but I do know someone quite near to you who may be able to do something." Halsey said softly, to which Will loudly agreed.

"Okay. His name is Dr. Lazarus, and I'll have him there by tonight. Good luck, Will."

The teary-eyed Spartan returned to the room, kneeling next to the bed.

"I called some friends of mine. I think they can make a perfect, living clone of him... If you want."

"Will... Can we afford that? I'd love it, but it sounds-"

"I got you. Don't worry, I can take care of it." Will comforted the crying mother of his child, kissing her on the head before grabbing a chair and sat next to her bed, where they waited until later, when the doctor arrived.

"I want you two to understand, if the cause of the child's death is genetic, the cloning will not work." The young, but aged doctor said with his chin to the sky.

"Okay."

"I am confident the child will be fine, however. Looking at your family lines, miss, and Will's Spartan augments, the child should be a very large and imposing figure when he is matured. I will make two clones, the second to make sure I get it exactly right if the first may have flaws inflicted by myself." Lazarus boasted as he began setting up his lab in a vacant hospital room.

"Uh, doctor, I thought that cloning was... Uh... Illegal..." Aundrea inquired.

"FLASH cloning is illegal, ma'am. I have come almost spot on in the exactly cloning industry, meaning they live and grow exactly like their precursor did or would, unlike clones suck as Will's when he was abducted. That clone died withing months, most likely due to degeneration from metabolic instability. Now, please, allow me to work." Lazarus finished before kicking the two out of the room.

So, withing another several months, Lazarus was able to construct two close to perfect clones of the dead child, the only difference was the eye color. The first's genetic error on Lazarus' part caused it to receive his mother's recessive ice-blue eye trait, while the second was more closely resembling the actual child.

The couple chose the child with blue eyes, the first, less perfect clone.

And on that day, September 16th, 2532, William Vance Bolin was "born".

* * *

"Okay, so you have to to stay in the pocket. And what's the rule on punching?"

"Never lead with a hook?" Jean answered off of memory.

"Good, good. Remember, leading jab and follow with an uppercut, then you can give 'em a good right hook. Try that on me." Will crouched down to Jean's level as the child paced forward with his hands defensively in the air.

Jean lead with a right jab, hitting straight in the face. In actuality, Will would have been unfazed by the blow, but instead he opened himself up for an uppercut by pretending to react to the assault.

As Jean finished his instructed attack, he heard his mother yell he and Will's names loudly and with much fury.

"WILL! JEAN! WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TWO DOING!?"

"Sparring?" Will said, his head slumping down, knowing he's in trouble.

"Come here!" She said calmly. Terrifyingly calm.

"What the fuck are you doing, teaching my son to fight like that?" She pushed Will and puffed her chest up as she spoke.

"He asked me to. He told me some kid was shoving him around and he needs to learn how to fight because he got challenged to a fist fight tomorrow." Will explained casually.

"And you didn't think to call the school?"

"How would that stop the bullying?" Will asked, innocently and ignorant of all sarcasm that might have come off.

"It would stop my son from being some violent, hulking brute like you." Aundrea shot back as she walked towards her oldest son.

"What?"

"You heard me."

"Aundrea. No. I wont take that." Will marched to her, turning the smaller woman around quickly as she walked, stopping her in her tracks.

"I save entire cities and planets at the cost of my own personal health and safety. I've slaughtered hordes of aliens who want nothing more than to see me dead, and I've never wanted to do it. Not once. I want there to be peace, and an end to wars. No more need for Spartans. I don't enjoy what I do, but it's all I know, so DON'T call me a violent brute!" Will said intensely right to Aundrea's face.

"Then why are you leaving?" She asked in reply, opening up Will's's eyes wide.

"Because if I don't, if I stay here with you, they'll come and kill us all. Easily. I'm leaving because I want nothing more than to come back here, to you, without that threat." Will calmed down, letting go of Aundrea softly.

"You go on ahead and go, and if you come back, you can see Vance and find someone else to fight for, cause I can't handle that you selfish bastard." Aundrea almost whispered to Will before she clutched Jean by the wrist and dragged him into the house.

Will tried his best, but he couldn't keep Aundrea, no matter how much he wanted to. He left for a new, important mission with his team. Ryan, Enos, Kelsey, Tony... Ben... His team, his friends, people who still cared about him.

* * *

"I wish I could stay. I wish I could be here for a few more years. Hell, I'd kill a few men if it meant another week. But I have to go. And no matter how far I go, or how long it is until I see you, I want you do remember that I love you more than anything else." Will said, clutching his son's head and pressing it against his. Vance, his two year old boy, would go the next six years without even seeing his father, and Will would not get to know the boy for several years after that. But, neither of them went more than a day without thinking of the other.

"Will, I'm sor-"

"Stop. This was you. I tried to make it work, but you just keep doing me like this. To me, you should be sorry, but don't say it. I was once told 'Sorry means you'll never do it again' when I was a kid." Will stood away from his son and made for the door.

"Will, I-"

"Speaking of which, thank you for taking care of my mom and my brother. Bye Jean, Vance. I love you guys." Will hugged the boy crying next to him and waved at the toddler down the hall. And with that, Will returned once more to the battlefield, where he could live or die any day, and pray for the former while fighting the latter.

But walking out that door was harder than any fight Will had ever been in

_**End of Arch III: Recovery**_


	8. Chapter 8: Struggle

**_Arch IV: 2552_**

**Struggle**

_2552_

"I'm going with you!" Ryan shouted directly into Will's face, pushing him as he did.

"Ryan, listen. They need you on Reach, and they need some help on Tribute. I'll be-" Will was cut off.

"Will you? T-that's a fucking Corvette. Those things are full of enemies. We will need the whole sq-squad on this." Ryan said, stuttering erratically.

"Orders are orders, you know that. Now, whatever this shit is, lock it down before someone decides you're not worth the money your suit costs." Will replied quickly, low in voice but high in intensity.

"Whatever. Just don't die on me. We need you, all three of you." Ryan marched off, pushing Will once more as he exited.

_What happened to you, Ryan?_

* * *

"This is your new machete, Will. Field testing proves that it not only can cut almost any material, but it can also withstand a covenant plasma sword in combat for an extended period of time." Halsey said, exited at her new invention.

"Thank you, ma'am." Will replied.

"There's no need to thank me. Thank me for the-_MJOLNIR Mark V Powered Assault Armor Online... Running Diagnostics...  
Energy Shielding: Online.  
HUD/Weapon Sync: Online.  
A.I. Sync: Offline  
HUD Radar: Online.  
HUD: Online  
MJOLNIR Mark V Powered Assault Armor is now 100% combat ready._" her voice suddenly sounded like the suit running diagnostics...

Will's vision suddenly flared up, his muscles tensing, and his head aching. He stepped out of the cryo tube and fell to one knee. Just because he was resistant to the pain did not mean he didn't need to stop.

After a few moments, Will stood and looked over at his team, who were doing the same as he was. Kelsey-018, Tony-747, and Will-916 made up Delta II.

"Okay, sir, I'm uploading ship scans and whatever other intel we have to your heads-up display, markers and checkpoints included. Insertion is simple enough. We fly in low, get shot at, and you guys jump out and onto one of the two Corvettes orbiting Casbah." The man on deck said quickly, obviously running low on time, handing the three Spartans datapads to visually see what he was verbally saying.

"What about the other Corvette?" Will asked, casually.

"We have Alpha Squad synced with you." He replied quickly.

"Conventional Warfare Alpha?" Kelsey asked.

"Yes. Anyways, there are several means in which you can go about destroying the ship, we found. Placing charges at the engines seems your safest best. Least resistance, but you'd have to carry around a heavy ass bomb to take out repulsor engines, and direct gunfire could set it off without fazing the hull of the ship. There's the bridge, which you could take and send the fucker in a nose dive for the water. I think the risks there can go without being said." The man said, by the end a defeated sound overcame his voice. He felt he was killing these Spartans, some of the last beacons of hope humanity has.

"We're strong, but the risk of a large bomb on our backs is too high. We take the bridge. You guys acting as Control?" Will said as he paced, thinking his decision through. He had never led a team on it's own full mission before. He didn't want to mess up.

"No. Control is acting down in the UNSC controlled zone one the surface. But you're out of time, get ready to jump." The man said, strapping himself onto a seat on the wall.

* * *

Will crashed on to the side of the Corvette, denting the purple metal heavily before slliding down the top of the hull to an exposed entry point. He dropped down fairly quickly, the Corvette still in orbit. An elite, not at all surprised by the blue Spartan, raised his gun and began firing. Will drew his magnum, shooting it directly in the face before it's shots were even fired, but Will did not go unnoticed.

As seven elites, three jackals, and five grunts began to open fire, Will tucked and rolled behind a covenant supply crate, which took the fire very nicely.

Kelsey was the next to drop down on the other side, unloading her two magnums into the backs of the enemies. They turned to return fire, but Will unloaded on them with his MA5K instead. When Tony dropped down and began firing his battle rifle, the fireteam was finished in moments.

"Kelsey, on point, Tony, behind her to the left. I've got right." Will barked before opening the door.

Kelsey ran in first, laying down fire in the narrow, enemy filled hallway. Tony was close behind her and to the left, firing at his vector. Will did the same from the right.

They cleared hallway after hallway until they reached the hangar. Suddenly, there was a dead silence as the entire covenant forces on the ship turned to the three, exposed Spartans.

"Awkward..." Tony said, jokingly.

"KILL THEM!" An elite said, sparking a vast alien war-cry as they all fired upon the three, now hiding, Spartans. In the chaos, some covenant were even killed by friendly fire, Delta II almost didn't have to do anything. They stayed low and in cover as the army fired on their last position. Will, leading them, was almost stabbed by an investigating elite ultra, the quick Spartan reflexes allowing him to plunge a knife into its neck before alarming the rest.

"Invisibility." Will said, holding the armor ability up for Kelsey and Tony to see. He activated it as kept low while he moved across the open space to the other side of the hanger's mirroring cover. He slid the ability across to Kelsey, who did the same to Tony. Before long, they were back into the hallways, safe.

* * *

"Look." Will pointed, weight down low as he marked the two elites in the room: one a Field Marshall and the other a general.

"Alright. Theses elites do not play around. Kelsey, you're the quietest. Take these plasma grenades and stick 'em both before they notice you. Can you do that?" Will asked, not too sure of this order himself.

"I got it, Will." She replied quietly.

"You sure?"

Kelsey snatched the invisibility and the grenades and put them on her back before sneaking extremely slowly to the two conversing elites. As she got closer, the elites seemed more and more lively as they spoke.

"What are they saying?" Tony asked.

"Kelsey, activate a translator on your HUD and patch it through." Will ordered.

At first, there was static, but then, the horrifying message was clear.

**"The bold demons do not speak our language. This attempt of our lives is pitiful. Just kill the female behind you Guld."** the Field Marshall said just in time. Kelsey rolled backwards, narrowly avoiding an energy sword to the head from the general.

Very quickly, Kelsey tossed both plasma grenades, sticking the Field Marshall's hand and the General's chest.

"YOU FOOL!" The Field Marshall yelled as he threw the General away, sticking his grenade onto the General as he did so. The explosion blw the elite to pieces.

"I will not be made a fool by a weak female DEMON!" The Marshall exclaimed as he drew his sword.

Kelsey is fast on her feet and in her mind. She rolled forward under the elite's swing and grabbed his second energy sword and retreated. Infuriated of the theft, the Marshall engaged her in combat, the two clashing swords in quick succession, but the Marshall had more training in the matter and strength over all, he soon knocked Kelsey over and went in for the final blow.

"Son of a-" Tony yelled as he sprinted to the elite, meaning to tackle. The engagement was short, the Marshall was much stroger and more skilled than the smaller Spartan, but Tony gave his all. He slammed into the Marshall's chest and brought his knife up into its gut before stepping back and giving it the jab-uppercut-dual hooks combo with ducking inbetween. The Marshall kicked Tony in the gut before impaling the Spartan through the chest and tossing him onto Kelsey, preparing to face the now angered Will; who was charging like a bull.

Will clashed blades with the elite, it soon becoming a power battle, which Will won. He pushed the elite backwards. As it came running back for a wide, open swing, Will rolled into it, giving the Marshall a strong body check when he came back up.

"You humans fight for naught, the prophets will-" Will brought his machete down on the elite's throat, almost completely chopping it off in a huge splash of blood.

"WILL!" Kelsey exclaimed, crouching over Tony.

"I'm okay, I'm okay, but my suit is... Punctured any bio... Bio foam doesn't fix lungs..." Tony said, coughing often.

"We're gonna get you out. We're in orbit, we have time." Will said, preparing Tony to pick him up.

"Nono no no! Fucking shit, no! I've been fighting for my whole life, and I lost. It's okay, right? At... At least I got stabbed in the front... Fuck... You just tell Enos I said goodbye, and tell Ben I always thought he was a dick." Tony said, the coughing getting worse as blood spilled out of his mouth, apparent when he took his helmet off. After a few seconds, he ripped off his dog tags and handed them to Kelsey.

"Tony... You.."

"Nope, stop. Leave me alone. Thirty-something years of Enos bullying me, I think I deserve to die in peace." Tony said as he closed his eyes and laid his head back seconds before the death rattle.

There was not much time to morn the passed Spartan. The door they entered slid open, the bulk of the covenant forces they passed now flanking them. Will stood and unloaded a clip into the bottle-necked crowd, taking out a few before they retreated down the hall. Kelsey stood and went for the holographic control panel the elites were using.

"Hurry!" Will exclaimed as he dragged Tony's body to cover and set himself up defensively against the covenant.

"Wasn't the hangar our exit point?" Kelsey asked as she pressed buttons rapidly.

"Sector scan says the bridge has an executive set of escape pods. Send us in a nosedive and I'll detonate Tony's armor." Will replied as he took cover from a barrage of plasma fire down the hall, one he could only relieve with a frag grenade to shred the peons in front to pieces, and popping the shields of the elites. He came out of cover just as the grenade exploded, capping the now exposed elites in the head with his magnum. He missed one bullet to an elite. It shot him with its concussion rifle, knocking Will over for a second. He recovered before the elites moved up, unloading his rifle down the hall and killing three elites before he returned to cover.

Suddenly, Will lost his footing as he began to slide down towards the other side of the room. Before he slid away completely, he closed the door and locked it. The sound of screaming grunts being crushed by their falling allies sent a chill up Will's spine.

Kelsey succeeded, the Corvette was heading for the water. Being in low orbit, they had very little time to escape.

"There, the pods. Get one ready." Will said as the gravity seemed to slip away, the effect of a falling ship allowing him to reach Tony's body and begin its detonation for fifty seconds.

"Will! Come on!" Kelsey exclaimed as she held her hand out to the Spartan fall up in the wrong way as the turbulence hit.

Clutching Kelsey's hand, Will was pulled into the pod seconds before it fired out of the now submerging Corvette. But as the two looked around, they did not see anything but sky, which was quickly fading. They were leaving orbit.

"Auto pilot? To where?" Will asked as he made his way to Kelsey in the front.

"No clue, adjusting course." Kelsey replied as she did so. The pod stopped sharply and turned back towards orbit. They were now out of Tribute's atmosphere.

As the front window revealed the once beautiful planet, the Spartans almost gasped in horror. The capitol city Cashbah, was being glassed as the extraction ships left orbit. Tribute was lost.

"We... We were too late." Kelsey slumped her head down as she sank into the purple metal seat.

"Uh. Hail one of those ships for a pick-up. Use your code so they don't shoot us." Will took his helmet off and let it go, the heavy metal clanking against the floor loudly.


	9. Chapter 9: Survival

**_Survival_**

Kelsey opened the door to the almost pitch-black room, the light behind her the only even slightly illuminating the room. At first, it seemed that she stepped into yet another empty room in her search for a specific person.

As she was about to exit the the room, seeing nothing in her line of sight, Kelsey turned to walk out when she looked down, seeing small Spartan boot-prints in the thick dust of the unused room in the lower levels of the ship.

"Enos?" Kelsey asked softly, not entirely sure someone was actually inside the room.

"What?" Enos stood and replied, her legs now within the light's reach.

"You okay?" Kelsey switched on the light, exposing the brooding Enos still in her armor's jet-black gel layer.

"As much as I'd love to chit-chat, _Princess_, I'd rather not talk about anything with _you_. So, if you'd kindly fuck off, it's be much appreciated." Enos said, literally waving Kelsey off as she went back to the corner of the almost empty, dusty room, next to some storage boxes.

"Princess. Right. You know, use being the only women on the team, you'd think that we'd be closer." Kelsey commented, crossing her arms as she did so. She refused to leave before at least engaging in a slight conversation.

"Sorry. Not interested in the pillow-talk, sweetheart." Enos plopped down onto a lower storage crate, mimicking Kelsey and crossing her arms, only in defiance.

"Fine. I'll be quick about it, then." Kelsey started: "I realize that you an Tony were close, but he meant a lot to all of us, not just you. I watched him... He died, and I couldn't help him. But we're a team, so you can either sit in here and sulk alone like a moody bitch, or you can be the strong, independent woman you've made yourself out to be and mourn _with_ us." Kelsey said, slowly becoming more and more intense as she talked. Before she became too exited, she ended her speech and marched out of the room, turning out the lights as she left, the door soon closing behind her.

Enos stood when the door closed, the room soon returning to its dark state. She walked across the room once again and switched the light back on as she whispered "Bitch?" to herself.

* * *

"Ryan..." Will said, approaching his friend for the first time since breaking the Tony news to the team. While Enos ran off by herself, Ryan and Ben walked off together, which worried Will.

"Get lost, Big Blue." Ben stood up out of pure distaste of Will.

"Hey, Ben, was I talking to you?" Will stepped to Ben, tired of his confrontational attitude since they left the gate entering Harvest.

"You are now, ain't ya?" Ben, the closest to Will height, stepped to him, ready for a fight.

Ryan stood, stepping between the two and giving Will this look of disappointment and anger: "I told you we needed an entire squad for this mission. We could have-"

"Tony was killed in an engagement with a high-ranking Elite I, myself, should have engaged. The mistake was mine. I was the only one who had hopes of defeating it." Will stated, looking at the ground as he did so.

"You fucked up! Just say it! You're not giving us a statement!" Ryan pushed Will's shoulder as he yelled: "It was a mistake sending you in. I should've gone myself." Ryan finished.

"Whoa, Ryan. What the hell is wrong with you, man? You're not yourself lately, and now you're being a total prick. What's wrong?" Will questioned him, noticing his best friend wasn't himself.

"He's done talking to you, Hulk." Ben said as Ryan sat.

"No one likes a henchman, Ben. Grow a brain." Will insulted Ben just as he walked away towards the door, where Kelsey waited for him.

As Will walked towards the waiting Kelsey, the door behind her opened, revealing Enos who came charging at Will for a hug.

"I'm so sorry, Enos." Will said, softly.

"It's not your guy's fault. He went out swinging." Enos said, he voice shaky as she let Will mess up her short, dark black hair.

"Some would disagree." Will stated simply as he looked over at Ryan, who shot him a look as well.

* * *

_3 Months After Tribute_

"Delta Team, please report to the Bridge." The intercom blared as the team collected themselves after being frozen for a few months.

When they finally made the short walk to the bridge, the Captain, Jaclyn, turned and saluted them.

"Ladies, gentlemen. Welcome." The young, female Captain said as she stepped aside, to reveal Earth, in all her glory.

Most stood in astonishment. None of them had been to Earth other than Ryan on official business, and Ben pretended not to care.

"Kels, weren't you born here?" Enos asked, still amazed by the sight of it.

"Huh? Yeah." Kelsey replied, surprised in Enos' interest: "My file says somewhere in Yore... Ope..." Kelsey struggled with pronouncing it, the Captain soon correcting her before continuing.

"The Covenant will be here soon enough. Be it by accident or by recon, they'll be here. We've been ordered to dock here in defense of our... Our home. You will be stationed planet-side, in Seattle, one of North America's big cities and a likely place the Covenant might attack." Jaclyn stated, reading off of a datapad.

"Why?" Ryan asked, simply, no disrespect intended, but disrespect came off.

"Because, Squad Leader," Jaclyn replied in a annoyed tone: "Seattle is one of the few cities that could easily survive without aid of the government or out-of-area resources. The State of Washington in itself has enough trees, food, fresh-water, and people in it to survive siege for years. _THAT_ is 'why'." She finished, absolutely disrespectfully.

"Ma'am, are there any assignments requested down there whilst waiting for the attack, or are we there as a precaution?" Will asked, respectfully, soon receiving a glare from Ryan from the other side of the squad.

"Merely a precaution, Spartan. You get to enjoy the comfort for a month or two until the action starts. Anymore questions?... No? Okay. We touch down in Four hours. I need you armored up and ready for presentation by then. We need to assure the CO down there to take you off of my hands. Shave five tons off of my damn ship. Dismissed." Captain Jaclyn finished, saluting the Spartans as they exited the bridge and heading towards the armory.

* * *

"It's actually a pretty nice place." Kelsey said as she walked out of the famous Pike's Place near the waterfront.

"Oh my gosh! Did you know that Seattle is one of the few cities to change up it's major historical locat- holy shit I don't care. Why are we even here?" Ben complained as he threw a tourist guide on the side of the road.

"Mostly to keep the civvies calm, and to fight off the aliens if they ever come here, so quit the bitching." Will answered before Ryan could muster up his first word.

"Sorry, sir. Did you interrupt me?" Ryan stopped along the street, cocking his head to Will, who turned to reply.

"What?" Will chuckled, assuming a joking laugh to come along.

"Assume one of your teammates is communicating to the Team Leader when asking a question, Spartan." Ryan got uppity as he stepped forward to Will, raising his arms to either side.

"While I get you're the leader, Sir, I think I've earned the right for you to talk to me with a tinge of respect, Ryan." The bigger Spartan stepped forward, towards Ryan.

"No, no. You got it right the first time, _with SIR_." Ryan, realizing he wasn't as threatening as Will, raised his head up slightly.

"Hey, HEY! Assholes! We are not doing this now! We are-" Enos continued yelling, but her voice seemed to fade into nothing as the crowd's screams got everyone's attention.

Will looked up as he saw several civillians fall over from something the Spartans barely felt. He saw, almost suddenly, a Covenant carrier jumped in just above Seattle, it's energy projector charging and ready to glass the city below it.

Before the words "Get down could even leave Will's lips, the projector fired, sending a shock wave large enough to send a car flying into both Will and Ryan, who crashed deeper into Post Alley. Ancient Bricks crumbled all around them, the alley preserved since the late 20th century. Will and Ryan looked over at each other before realizing their way out in front of them was blocked by a car and rubble.

"Go. GO!" Ryan yelled as he and Will scrambled to their feet and ran down the alley. When the second shock wave came, the brick and mortar all around them crumbled, an entire building almost coming down around them. As they exited the alley and got back onto the main street of Pike's Place, a large market that people could visit, on foot, they looked back up at the Assault Carrier as several cruisers and corvettes jumped in behind it.

"Look! Drop pods." Will pointed to the streaks of light coming from the carrier for Ryan.

"Find it's location on you HUD map, mark it for the others. I'll radio command." Ryan ordered as he pulled away from the sound of the crowd, attempting to talk to someone, anyone on the radio.

After a few seconds, the Spartans met back up.

"Marked it. Anything on the comms?" Will asked, panting from the excitement of the last few minutes.

"No... I'll radio a distress signal while we go. Anything from the rest of Delta?" Ryan asked, panting for the same reason.

"Yeah, they're En Route to the drop location. It's about two miles from here, over by the Old Space Needle Site." Will said, whilst reading directions.

"Alright, we need to go. Now." Ryan rushed to the nearest street and stopped a civilian vehicle: "Sir! We need to take this, now!"

"Okay! Okay!" The man yelled, putting his hands up and exiting the vehicle.

"Thank you." Will said as he entered the passenger seat and stuck his head and gun out of the lowered window.

Within minutes the Spartans were at their location on a highway overpass, lucky that drivers pulled over at the sight of a Spartan with his head and gun out of the window.

Now in the shadow of the Assault Carrier, they expected for their to be blood, death, and hell-fire. Instead, there was simply two craters from the initial glassing blasts and silence. All civilians in the area either dead or gone away.

"Ryan, what the hell is happening?" Will said, quietly, in awe.

"I donno." Ryan replied, mouth wide open under his helmet.

And there it was. Within seconds, seemingly hundreds of Covenant soldiers, mostly brutes, came up the climb of the overpass Ryan and Will parked on. Behind them, another horde of pods fell along a ath as the Super Carrier, Corvette, and several smaller ships dropped pods, Phantoms, and other Covenant Navy vehicles.

Seattle was under a full-scale attack.

Will drew his MA5K: "You think we can take 'em?"

"Just us two? Probably not all of them. We're the rest of Delta?" Ryan asked, drawing his shotgun.

"Still En Route. They walked." Will raised his weapons as the Covenant horde began running in closer and missing their shots.

"Ready?" Ryan asked, quietly.

"Ready." Will replied, his entire body tense.

One of the brute chieftains sprinted ahead of the entire army, bigger than most and boasting a huge hammer, he yelled and growled as he came in closer.

Suddenly, the two Spartans sprinted forward, nearing the raging Brute before splitting off into two different directions and jumping off of the overpass, landing hard several meters below. Then, even under that, they jumped over the next ledge, finally landing on the ground floor, off of the highway and now into the inner city at top speed.

At the same time, the immediate invasion of New Mombasa had started. The Battle of Earth had begun. The war with the most rights to the World War namesake had started, and Delta Team was the only hope for this front.


	10. Chapter 10: Left Undone

**Left Undone**

_Day 4- 23:40_

The rain was torrential, coming down fast in large rain drops, much unlike most storms that crowded the northwest. As Will peered down below through the rain, he spotted a brute pack. A specific brute pack they'd been hunting for days now.

The confirmation was made, the brute chieftain above all else in the city, War Chieftain Erebus was the same who forced Delta's retreat on harvest. Other than wanting to create chaos within the ranks of the brutes in Seattle, but his assassination was very personal.

"Anything else on him?" Will asked behind him and he stood up from his kneeling position..

"All the report had was a name and rank. Sorry." Kelsey said, lowly.

"You sometimes can't ask very much professionalism from reconnaissance, Kelsey." Enos commented, still looking down the scope.

"Says the Spartan who slept with a teammate." Ben commented from the back of the room, arms folded.

"Excuse me Brooding McDickhead? Have some fucking respect for the dead before you open your fucking mouth!" Enos jumped up, charging towards the chuckling Ben.

"Whoa, hey, calm down, E. And Ben, don't be a dick!" Kelsey mediated, resulting in Enos flipping Ben off and returning to her rifle.

Ryan scanned the area around the pack; several low buildings and a few higher up apartments with balconies on every floor. The lower buildings were close enough for these Spartans to jump. He'd just found the flank in his plan.

"Okay. Enos, post up here, Kelsey's with me on the roof, Ben and Will, take position on either side of the camp and wait for me to give the word. We're getting this fucker tonight." Ryan said, almost cheerfully as he patted Will and Kelsey's shoulders and turned towards the stairs behind him on the other side of the empty room.

"Wait, now? We hardly have any intel." Will argued, stepping away from the window and towards Ryan.

"Shut up." Ben said, intersecting Will and pushing his to his left, towards the stairs down.

"Good luck, blondie." Enos insulted lightly and jokingly as Kelsey stepped away from him.

"Don't miss." Kelsey replied in a sing-song fashion as she went up the stairs.

Will went down the street, to the right of Enos' nest, Ben went the opposite. He ran, stepping no louder than the rain, three blocks in that direction and then took a left, the pack's camp four blocks directly in front of the nest.

As he ran, Will looked up to see a Spartan leap across an alleyway onto the next building. The planned soon made sense in Will's head.

"In position." Ben said, whispering on the coms.

"Same." Will continued.

There was a long silence of radio static and loud rain. Will stood in the shadow, his dark blue blending in fairly well in the cover of midnight. As he waited for Ryan's word, Will checked his ammo: _27 rounds in the weapon, three 30 round magazines left_. Will assessed. Deciding to take things quietly at first, the Blue Titan slowly placed the carbine on his back and quietly drew his machete and his knuckled trench knife for good measure.

"This is Delta Lead. We're in position. Keep it-" Ryan started, interrupted by a blaring shotgun blast in the night , obviously by Ben's doing.

The black armored Spartan charged forward, shooting another three blasts before stopping for even a second. He tore open a roaming brute minor, arm flying as it screamed in pain. Waking up pissed, a major clotheslined Ben, knocking him right onto his back.

With a deep chuckle, the major brought up its boot to stomp Ben in the face. He rolled away, regaining his footing and quickly drawing his magnum, unloading his entire magazine into the brute's chest.

The major stumbled backwards as its shields broke, opening it up for Ben's next attack. Ben gave a loud battlecry as he body-checked the brute into a store wall and jammed his large knife right into its neck, purplish-violet blood flooding out.

Another three brutes came out of the store, armed and ready. Two with spikers and one with a brute shot, the began firing at Ben. who promptly used the meaty, but heavy, carcass of his freshly killed ape as cover. He charged forward with it and tossed it at the group, rolling under a brute shot round. He drew his shotgun and stuffed the barrel onto the chest of the highest ranking brute of the three, the one who wielded the brute shot. He pulled the trigger, tearing through the shields, the armor, the skin, and the bones, practically gutting the alien.

Ben's attention soon shifted to the two brutes on either side of him. One came to slash him with its spiker's blade in a backhand swing. Ben smashed the butt of his gun on the brute's wrist, snapping it, and came in close to shove his bowie knife in the brute's armpit, which jetted through the shoulder. The other brute began to shoot Ben in the back as it stepped towards him. By the third round, Ben shot down below the hail of fire, allowing the brute he'd just stabbed to take the hits. With a angry howl, the third brute tossed a incendiary grenade it lifted off of some stealth brutes earlier.

Ben reacted to this as quickly as he could. There was no dodging at this close of a range, but he managed to grab the blazing hot grenade and throw it back, the main explosion engulfing the third brute in flame. Ben looked down at his hand, the gel layer on his palm now heavily melted, but still vacuum sealed.

"God damn it, Ben!" Will yelled, jamming his machete through the spine of a brute minor focused on Ben. Several brutes turned to face Will, at least nine. The laughed as they began to slowly surround him, ready to tear him apart.

One brute's head exploded almost suddenly, a loud bang reverberating in everyone's ears a split second afterwards. Then another, then another, and then another, all within seconds of each other, only stopping because Enos had to reload.

With the ape's attention at the source of the sniper fire, Will drew his primary weapon, dropping his knife and sheaving his machete, and fired the rest of his current clip, killing two brutes fairly quickly.

The other three turned and charged at Will, dropping their weapons entirely and bearing their vicious claws.

Will ducked under a reckless slash from a smaller brute minor, thrusting himself forward into its torso, lifting it up over his shoulder, and dropping it hard on its head behind him. As another one came close, it's jaw suddenly shot off into a wall, it's body spinning in the direction of the bullet's hit as it tumbled to the floor.

The last brute, a Captain Ultra, charged forward with a successful tackle, sending Will tumbling to the floor for a second. Will placed his foot on the Ultra's belly and shot it up off of him, giving himself time to stand up.

"I will TEAR YOU APART!" The brute shouted as it socked Will square in the jaw, turning the Spartan around, and then kicking him back down to the floor.

Will half rolled over his shoulder, ending up on his back, sliding backwards due to the slick ground from the rain. With his magnum drawn, Will was able to break the brute's shields and cap the big ape between the eyes.

"Thanks eagle eye." Will said, slightly out of breath over the comms to Enos as he stood.

Will got closer to the front door of the store the pack was squatting in. running between tents and piles of bones. When he got there, he saw unarmed brutes doomed to fight the raging Ben, who was known for rolling his eyes back like a shark and dominating everything in his way with no remorse. Kelsey stood on the roof of the store while Ryan was about to open the door to the side of the store. Everything seemed to be going okay, even with the lack of stealth Will wished he had.

Suddenly, there was a bang that ceased all battle. Erebus swung his hammer, smashing open the door Ryan was about to enter, sending the small red Spartan into the wall behind him. Stunned from the hit, Ryan simply watched as Erebus swung at him again, sending into the building next to the store.

"Ryan!" Will cried out as Erebus began to sprint down the alley, directly to Will: "Wait, shit! SHIT!" Will ran out of the way, still getting flung into the air by the powerful War Chieftain's hammer.

Ben, of course, ran right at him when he saw the other brutes slink back into the the store, letting their leader do what he did best. Ben's first shotgun blast seemed to make Erebus stumble slightly. The 11 foot tall brute chuckled at the brave notion and placed his hammer on his back, walking towards the rushing Ben.

Ben got in close, hopping to gut this one too, almost as if he didn't notice the realize Erebus' shields were completely unfazed by his current attack.

Erebus snatched Ben's shotgun out of his hand, and on the backstroke of the snatch, he swatted Ben to the side like an insect. Bending the firearm, Erebus slowly paced towards the injured Spartan and begun punching wildly, heavily denting the black Mk. VI armor before Enos shot him in the back four times, damaging his shields.

"Theros." Erebus ordered one of his subordinates, a fuel rod cannon soon arriving at the War Chieftain's feet.

Erebus fired his entire clip at Enos' floor, injuring her slightly dispite her initial dodge of the first few. When the brute threw the heavy weapon aside and returned to pummeling Ben deeper into the asphalt, a smaller, lighter colored Spartan came down on his head, yanking the shining helmet right off of his head and drawing her gun.

Kelsey was able to fire a single magnum shot at Erebus before the giant slammed his hammer down next to her and Ben, sending the two flying in opposite directions.

"Delta... Delta, sound off." Will ordered, figuring Ryan was unconscious.

"Injured slightly, biofoam fix. But my rifle's melted, so I'm coming to you." Enos replied, tossing her sniper aside as she headed down the stairs.

"I'm alright." Kelsey said as she staggered upright.

"..." Ben's light breathing and gargle on blood was his best attempt at a reply. He was conscious, but he'd need to be extracted from combat after this bout.

"Alright, Kels, at the same time." Will said, finally walking back into the area he was so rudely jetted out of.

The two Spartans hit Erebus from either side, Kelsey successfully stabbing him in the ribs with her knife a few times while the Chieftain attempted direct hits at the dodging Will with his hammer. He turned and smacked Kelsey away, picking Will as the dangerous target.

Will rolled under Erebus' legs and slashed at them as he got upright, soon after having to dodge yet another swing with a roll.

With Erebus almost being twice Will's height, Will literally had to climb him to hit him in the face. After successfully jumping off of his knee, Will came face to face with the brute with an uppercut, making Erebus stagger back in pain from the robotic arm punch.

Before he could regain his footing, Will was sent into the ground with a hammer downswing, which could have crushed Will's skull had he been hit in the head, but it rather dislocated his shoulder, easily.

Unable to recover quickly enough, the combined fire of Enos' and Kelsey's magnum shots were enough to get Erebus bleeding. The brute charged them, both fast enough to dodge and climb up his legs at the same time.

Able to toss Kelsey off, Erebus then looked over to see Enos' visor as she shoved a frag grenade in his mouth. Erebus attempted to spit it out, but Enos' quick reaction allowed her to snatch it from the air, smack Erebus with it, and shove it right back, but this time too deep down for him to spit it out.

"Yeah, eat that bi-... Wait." Enos paused in horror as Erebus's maw clenched down on her arm, harder and harder. She screamed as his fangs pierced her armor and her skin, eventually crushing the bones in her forearm until it was severed completely. As he swallowed her arm and seemed to forget about the grenade, Erebus clutched Enos by the face a roared as he smashed it into the thick metal wall of the store.

Will looked up in horror at the event, and seemed to forget the grenade too as Erebus walked up to him.

"I remember the way you cower, the way you run. I've seen you before, on Harvest. I owe you debt of death, which I have taken far too long to re-" Erebus' chest expanded rapidly, as if someone blew air directly to it. Soon, it was revealed his shields held his together for a few seconds until the compressed explosion tore Erebus in half, covering Will in the brute's blood.

Every single brute inside the store either howled in mourning or in anger as the marched out of the back of the store. Kelsey, knowing no one was in a condition to fight them all, sprinted over to Erebus' lower half, grabbed a fuel rod clip, picked up the blood covered fuel rod, and loaded it.

Kelsey fired the rounds in volleys, literally tearing apart and even melting most of the pack by the end of the clip she had. The rest did the fairly smart thing: they turned around and ran with high pitched cries of defeat.

"Enos! Hey, E, you okay?" Kelsey asked as she turned the limp Spartan off of her belly. Enos' arm war gone, torn uncleanly off. Her visor shattered, large pieces of it lodged in her skull, but she was still alive. He eye moved rapidly as Kelsey's eyes widened. Enos shook uncontrollably as she clutched her face, feeling a huge shard was deep into her eye, and another deep into her dome.

"No! Nonono!" Will exclaimed as he approached the two: "Enos..."

Enos' visible eye soon rolled back, her face leaking blood rapidly and her remaining limbs shaking viciously until Will clutched her hand tightly. Then, she began to slow down, her eye rolled back and her mouth now open. Her iris was devoid of all color as a inaudible word came out of her lings along with her last breath.

Enos was dead.

"Get... Get Ben moving. I'll grab Ryan. We'll come back for her. when they're safe..." Will said lightly as he tore off Enos' dog tags from her corpse and stood.

_"This can't be..." Enos ran up the set of concrete stairs, small rocks embedded into it to make it look slightly elegant. She crashed through a door._

_Enos continued forward, turning to her immediate left into a small kitchen where a freshly cooked meal laid hot. She took a left straight down the hall. To her left was a bathroom. At the end of the hall and to the right was the master bed._

_At the very back was a closed door with the name "Enos" painted in pink on the light blue door._

_"You okay?" Anthony came up behind Enos with a hushed voice._

_"I thought I already found out this was fake..." Enos said, looking down at her civilian clothes. When she looked behind her to Tony, he was wearing similar._

_"Go ahead." Tony pointed toward the door, pushing Enos forward._

_Enos opened the door to see it was almost untouched by time. Just how her memories made it seem. A fuzzy light shining in from the windows, a bed with a skirt at the bottom, and horse print all over the blanket. The bed was still made, the pillows covered by the blanket and not one wrinkle was even remotely visible, even to her augmented sight. There were dolls and stuffed horses lining the walls and a pink rug in the middle to tie it all up. She looked down, and a dog stood there, looking her right at her._

_"Tony... This is..." Enos began t_o tear up as she walked around her perfectly preserved room. She turned to Tony and fell into his arm.

_"Perfect?" Tony asked, smiling as he bent his head down and kissed Enos._

_"Yeah. It's Heavenly."_


End file.
